Meaning & use
body bags
Last updated
Meaning
nounplural
Large thick bags, usually black or white, used to carry a dead person away from an accident or disaster.
Grammar: Almost always plural; use the singular 'body bag' for one.
Patterns
- a body bag
- in a body bag
- zip up a body bag
Rescue workers carried the victims away in body bags.
The hospital stores body bags in a room near the emergency entrance.
News footage showed rows of body bags after the earthquake.
Word forms
| singular | body bag |
|---|
Common combinations
- zip up a body bag
- The paramedic quietly zipped up the body bag.
- a row of body bags
- A row of body bags lay along the edge of the field.
- put someone in a body bag
- The soldiers had to put their fallen comrade in a body bag.
- body bag count
- Officials refused to give a body bag count to reporters.
Word family
- body bag noun
- The singular form: one such bag.
Commonly confused: body bags or bodyboard?
body bags vs bodyboard
A bodyboard is a short foam board for riding waves; it sounds similar but has nothing to do with body bags.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'body bags' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Body bags' are for carrying dead bodies, so the rescue-team sentence fits. The others wrongly use the phrase for a rescue float, luggage, or clothing.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “body bags”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.