Meaning & use
morgue
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A room or building where dead bodies are kept until they are buried or examined.
Grammar: Countable: you can say a morgue or the morgue.
Patterns
- in the morgue
- at the morgue
- a hospital morgue
The body was taken to the morgue for an autopsy.
She works in the hospital morgue, preparing bodies for families to identify.
Police went to the morgue to check the records.
nouncountableinformal
A place or collection where old newspapers, magazines, or other records are stored.
Grammar: Often used in the phrase 'newspaper morgue'.
Patterns
- newspaper morgue
- in the morgue
The reporter searched the newspaper morgue for old photographs.
The library's morgue contains every issue of the magazine since 1900.
Word forms
| plural | morgues |
|---|
Common combinations
- hospital morgue
- The hospital morgue is in the basement.
- police morgue
- The police morgue holds unidentified bodies.
- in the morgue
- The bodies were kept in the morgue overnight.
- newspaper morgue
- He found the article in the newspaper morgue.
Synonyms and how they differ
- mortuary
- Mortuary is a more formal word for the same place, often used in British English.
- funeral home
- A funeral home prepares bodies for burial and holds services, but it is not usually called a morgue.
Word family
Commonly confused: morgue or mourge? morgue or mortgage?
morgue vs mourge
This is a misspelling of morgue. Remember there is no 'u' after the 'o'.
morgue vs mortgage
A mortgage is a loan for buying a house, completely different from a morgue.
Practice
The police took the unidentified body to the ______ for examination.
Choose one answer.
The correct spelling is morgue, a place where dead bodies are kept. 'Mourge' is a misspelling, 'mortgage' is a house loan, and 'mortuary' is also a place but is more formal and less common in this context.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “morgue”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.