These words refer to a dead person or animal. Corpse is the most general term here, applying to any physical specimen that is not alive. It is neutral in tone and is equally suitable in common, medical or criminological parlance: identifying a corpse in the morgue; a post-mortem was held on the corpse . Body is substituted for corpse in common speech when the latter is felt to be brutally blunt. Because body is both simply and factual, however, it does not give a euphemistic tone. One would certainly speak to someone bereaved about the body , not about the corpse . Where considerations for the feelings of others is not an issue, corpse is more exact, since body can, or course, refer to the living as well as the dead. In this neutral context, on the other hand, body might still be more appropriate for the recently dead than corpse .

Cadaver , most specifically, refers to a corpse used for medical education or research, excluding those examined in a post-mortem merely to determine the cause of death. Cadaver may be used of non-human animals slated for medical dissection as well as of human bodies. Outside this medical context, cadaver would have overtones of grislyness or gallows-humour.

Stiff is a slang word for corpse , and has a bizarrely humorous quality owing to is association with gangland movies in the past two or three decades. Today it sounds a little dated.

• Hey, Charlie, where’ll we put the stiff ?

Once can imagine anyone using the term, however, who becomes so familiar with handling corpses that he begins to regard them utterly dispassionately as objects. In this context, any use of the word by medical students or police need not betoken lack of respect for life, but only represent a necessary pose of jocularity to make their close association with death more bearable.