different between body vs phenomenon

English

Alternative forms

• bodie (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English bodi, bodi?, from Old English bodi?, bode? (“body, trunk, chest, torso, height, stature”), from Proto-West Germanic *bodag (“body, trunk”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?ewd?- (“to be awake, observe”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?b?di/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?b?di/, [?b??i]
• Rhymes: -?di
• Hyphenation: bod?y
• Homophone: bawdy (in accents with the cot-caught merger)

Noun

body (countable and uncountable, plural bodies)

1. Physical frame.
   1. The physical structure of a human or animal seen as one single organism. [from 9th c.]

      I saw them walking from a distance, their bodies strangely angular in the dawn light.

   2. The fleshly or corporeal nature of a human, as opposed to the spirit or soul. [from 13th c.]

      The body is driven by desires, but the soul is at peace.

   3. A corpse. [from 13th c.]

      Her body was found at four o'clock, just two hours after the murder.

   4. (archaic or informal except in compounds) A person. [from 13th c.]
      • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society 1973, page 463:

        Indeed, if it belonged to a poor body, it would be another thing; but so great a lady, to be sure, can never want it […]

      • 1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter 28:

        Sometime I've set right down and eat WITH him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing.

      What's a body gotta do to get a drink around here?

   5. (sociology) A human being, regarded as marginalized or oppressed.
      • 1999, Devon Carbado, Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality: A Critical Reader (page 87)

        This, of course, was not about the State, but it was certainly an invasion: black bodies acting out in a public domain circumscribed by a racist culture. The Garvey movement presents an example of black bodies transgressing racialized spatial boundaries.

      • 2012, Trystan T. Cotten, Transgender Migrations (page 3)

        In doing so, Haritaworn also rethinks the marginality of transgender bodies and practices in queer movements and spaces.

      • 2016, Laura Harrison, Brown Bodies, White Babies (page 5)

        As the title suggests, this project is particularly interested in how race intersects with reproductive technologies—how brown bodies are deployed in the creation of white babies.

2. Main section.
   1. The torso, the main structure of a human or animal frame excluding the extremities (limbs, head, tail). [from 9th c.]

      The boxer took a blow to the body.

   2. The largest or most important part of anything, as distinct from its appendages or accessories. [from 11th c.]

      The bumpers and front tyres were ruined, but the body of the car was in remarkable shape.

   3. (archaic) The section of a dress extending from the neck to the waist, excluding the arms. [from 16th c.]

      Penny was in the scullery, pressing the body of her new dress.

   4. The content of a letter, message, or other printed or electronic document, as distinct from signatures, salutations, headers, and so on. [from 17th c.]
   5. (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:) A bodysuit. [from 19th c.]
   6. (programming) The code of a subroutine, contrasted to its signature and parameters. [from 20th c.]

      In many programming languages, the method body is enclosed in braces.

3. Coherent group.
   1. A group of people having a common purpose or opinion; a mass. [from 16th c.]

      I was escorted from the building by a body of armed security guards.

   2. An organisation, company or other authoritative group. [from 17th c.]

      The local train operating company is the managing body for this section of track.

   3. A unified collection of details, knowledge or information. [from 17th c.]

      We have now amassed a body of evidence which points to one conclusion.

4. Material entity.
   1. Any physical object or material thing. [from 14th c.]

      All bodies are held together by internal forces.

   2. (uncountable) Substance; physical presence. [from 17th c.]
      • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room Chapter 1

        The voice had an extraordinary sadness. Pure from all body, pure from all passion, going out into the world, solitary, unanswered, breaking against rocks—so it sounded.

      We have given body to what was just a vague idea.

   3. (uncountable) Comparative viscosity, solidity or substance (in wine, colours etc.). [from 17th c.]

      The red wine, sadly, lacked body.

   4. An agglomeration of some substance, especially one that would be otherwise uncountable.
      • 1806 June 26, Thomas Paine, "The cause of Yellow Fever and the means of preventing it, in places not yet infected with it, addressed to the Board of Health in America", The political and miscellaneous works of Thomas Paine, page 179:

        In a gentle breeze, the whole body of air, as far as the breeze extends, moves at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour; in a high wind, at the rate of seventy, eighty, or an hundred miles an hour […]

      • 2012 March 19, Helge Løseth, Nuno Rodrigues and Peter R. Cobbold, "World's largest extrusive body of sand?", Geology, volume 40, issue 5

        Using three-dimensional seismic and well data from the northern North Sea, we describe a large (10 km³) body of sand and interpret it as extrusive.

      • 2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns

        The huge body of ice is in the southeastern edge of a Central Asian region called the Third Pole. 

      The English Channel is a body of water lying between Great Britain and France.

5. (printing) The shank of a type, or the depth of the shank (by which the size is indicated).

   a nonpareil face on an agate body

   • 1992, Mary Kay Duggan, ?Italian Music Incunabula: Printers and Type (page 99)

     The stemless notes could have been cast on a body as short as 4 mm but were probably cast on bodies of the standard 14 mm size for ease of composition.

6. (geometry) A three-dimensional object, such as a cube or cone.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:body
• See also Thesaurus:corpse

Derived terms

Pages starting with “body”.

Translations

See also

• corporal
• corporeal

Verb

body (third-person singular simple present bodies, present participle bodying, simple past and past participle bodied)

1. To give body or shape to something.

   And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name. — Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

2. To construct the bodywork of a car.
3. (transitive) To embody.
4. (transitive, slang, African-American Vernacular) To murder someone.
5. (transitive, slang, African-American Vernacular, by extension) To utterly defeat someone.
6. (transitive, slang, video games) to hard counter a particular character build or play style. Frequently used in the passive voice form, get bodied by.

References

Anagrams

• BYOD, Boyd, Doby, do by

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?bod?/
• Rhymes: -od?
• Hyphenation: bo?dy

Etymology 1

From English body, bodysuit.

Noun

body n (indeclinable)

1. bodysuit, leotard

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the main entry.

Noun

body

1. nominative/accusative/vocative/instrumental plural of bod

Anagrams

• doby

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English body.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?b?.di/
• Hyphenation: bo?dy

Noun

body m (plural body's, diminutive body'tje n)

1. A leotard.
2. Body, substance.

Finnish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?body/, [?bo?dy]
• IPA^(key): /?bodi/, [?bo?di]
• Rhymes: -ody
• Homophone: bodi
• Syllabification: bo?dy

Noun

body

1. snapsuit, diaper shirt, onesies (infant bodysuit)

Declension

Pronunciation ?body:

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?b?.di/

Noun

body m (invariable)

1. leotard

   Synonym: calzamaglia

Further reading

• body in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Scots

Alternative forms

• bodie

Etymology

From Middle English body, bodi?, from Old English bodi?, bode? (“body, trunk, chest, torso, height, stature”).

Noun

body (plural bodies)

1. body
2. person, human being

Spanish

Noun

body m (plural bodys or bodies)

1. bodysuit

English

Alternative forms

• phaenomenon, phænomenon (archaic)
• phainomenon (archaic, academic, or technical)
• phœnomenon (hypercorrect, obsolete)

Etymology

From Late Latin phaenomenon (“appearance”), from Ancient Greek ?????????? (phainómenon, “thing appearing to view”), neuter present middle participle of ????? (phaín?, “I show”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /f??n?m?n?n/, /f??n?m?n?n/
• (US) IPA^(key): /f??n?m?n?n/, /f??n?m?n?n/

Noun

phenomenon (plural phenomena or (nonstandard) phenomenons or phenomenon)

1. A thing or being, event or process, perceptible through senses; or a fact or occurrence thereof.
   • 1900, Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion, ch. 1:

     The Indians, making a hasty inference from a trivial phenomenon, arrived unawares at a probably correct conclusion.

   • 2007, "Ask the Experts: Hurricanes," USA Today, 7 Nov. (retrieved 16 Jan. 2009):

     Hurricanes are a meteorological phenomenon.

2. (by extension) A knowable thing or event (eg by inference, especially in science)

3. A kind or type of phenomenon (sense 1 or 2)

4. Appearance; a perceptible aspect of something that is mutable.
   • 1662, Thomas Salusbury (translator), Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, First Day:

     I verily believe that in the Moon there are no rains, for if Clouds should gather in any part thereof, as they do about the Earth, they would thereupon hide from our sight some of those things, which we with the Telescope behold in the Moon, and in a word, would some way or other change its Phœnomenon.

5. A fact or event considered very unusual, curious, or astonishing by those who witness it.
   • 1816, Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary—Volume I, ch. 18:

     The phenomenon of a huge blazing fire, upon the opposite bank of the glen, again presented itself to the eye of the watchman. . . . He resolved to examine more nearly the object of his wonder.

6. A wonderful or very remarkable person or thing.
   • 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, ch. 23:

     "This, sir," said Mr Vincent Crummles, bringing the maiden forward, "this is the infant phenomenon—Miss Ninetta Crummles."

   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, "The Phantom Rickshaw":

     But, all the same, you're a phenomenon, and as queer a phenomenon as you are a blackguard.

7. (philosophy, chiefly Kantian idealism) An experienced object whose constitution reflects the order and conceptual structure imposed upon it by the human mind (especially by the powers of perception and understanding).
   • 1900, S. Tolver Preston, "Comparison of Some Views of Spencer and Kant," Mind, vol. 9, no. 34, p. 234:

     Every "phenomenon" must be, at any rate, partly subjective or dependent on the subject.

   • 1912, Roy Wood Sellars, "Is There a Cognitive Relation?" The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. 9, no. 9, p. 232:

     The Kantian phenomenon is the real as we are compelled to think it.

Usage notes

• The universal, common, modern spelling of this term is phenomenon. Of the alternative forms listed above, phaenomenon, phænomenon, and phainomenon are etymologically consistent, retaining the ?? diphthong from its Ancient Greek etymon ?????????? (phainómenon); in the case of the first two, it is in the Romanised form of the Latin ae diphthong, whereas in the latter it is a direct transcription of the original Ancient Greek. The form spelt with œ has no etymological basis. All those alternative forms are pronounced identically with phenomenon and are archaic, except for phainomenon, which sees some technical use in academia and is pronounced with an initial f? ([fa?],).
• By far the most common and universally accepted plural form is the classical phenomena; the Anglicised phenomenons is also sometimes used. The plural form phenomena is frequently used in the singular, and the singular form is sometimes used in the plural. Arising from this nonstandard use, the double plurals phenomenas and phenomenae, as well as a form employing the greengrocer’s apostrophe — phenomena’s — are also seen.

Synonyms

• (observable fact or occurrence): event
• (unusual, curious, or astonishing fact or event): marvel, miracle, oddity, wonder, legend
• (wonderful person or thing): marvel, miracle, phenom, prodigy, wonder, legend

Antonyms

• (philosophy: experienced object structured by the mind): noumenon, thing-in-itself

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• phenomenon in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• phenomenon in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.