body count

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Coined by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War in the sense "number of killed enemy combatants", in 1962 according to Merriam-Webster. In the late 2010s, it has also come to use to denote the number of sexual partners an individual has had.

Noun[edit]

body count (plural body counts)

  1. The number of persons or bodies counted as casualties, especially of those killed.
    • 2017 January 12, Jesse Hassenger, “A literal monster truck is far from the stupidest thing about Monster Trucks”, in The Onion AV Club[1]:
      In addition to racking up what looks like a substantial offscreen body count, the movie at one point offers an eight-second introduction for a sleazy used-car salesman character for the sole purpose of justifying Tripp and Creech laying waste to his inventory.
  2. (slang) The total number of sexual partners of a given individual.
    Hyponyms: notch count (with the vagin affecting the metric), cock count (with the penis affecting the metric), mileage (with the penis affecting the metric if tallied for a vagina-owner)