Etymology: Middle English cors , < Old French cors (11–13th cent.) = Provençal cors < Latin corpus body. In the 14th cent. the French was refashioned after Latin as corps (p mute), and that spelling also passed into English, giving eventually the modern corpse n. Corps was at first identical in pronunciation with cors, but by 1500 the p appears to have been sometimes pronounced, and this became at length the prevalent spelling and pronunciation. But cors, from the 16th cent. spelt corse, never became obsolete, and still remains as a somewhat archaic and poetic form of corpse, which is itself moreover often pronounced without the p in reading.

Etymology: Of uncertain origin. In sense it is identical with coss v., being the usual English form while coss is mostly Scots; this, with the fact that both coss and corse certainly go back to an early date, makes it almost impossible to consider them as mere phonetic variants arising from the vocalization of r in corse , or the insertion of r into the spelling of coss . It is, however, in favour of their identity that there is a third verb, scorse v.¹, variously written skoase, skoce, scoarse, scource, synonymous in meaning with corse and coss; and that Italian has both cozzonare and scozzonare ‘to coarce or trucke horses with a horse-coarcer’ (Florio).