the dead body of a human being; "the cadaver was intended for dissection"; "the end of the police search was the discovery of a corpse"; "the murderer confessed that he threw the stiff in the river"; "honor comes to bless the turf that wraps their clay"
a reference work (often in several volumes) containing articles on various topics (often arranged in alphabetical order) dealing with the entire range of human knowledge or with some particular specialty