English edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

From body +‎ -ship.

Noun edit

bodyship (uncountable)

  1. The quality, condition, form, structure, or makeup of a body (all senses); corpus; embodiment; anatomy
    • 1872, L R. E, The pace that kills, by L.R.E. - Page 141:
      [...] the gentleman entirely failed to appreciate the sacrifice the lady had made in having condescended from being nobody at all herself, except the pet and the spoilt child of her family, to marry him whose bodyship of any kind remained still to be made.
    • 1890, The Fanciers' Journal:
      And readers can bet precious good care was taken that its august bodyship did not suffer.
    • 1982, Derek Legge, The Education of Adults in Britain - Page 125:
      With essential power democratically held by the branches, and ' responsible bodyship ' in the hands of the districts, inevitably there have been questions about the activities and powers of the national centre.
    • 1987, Anne Atkins, Split image: male and female after God's likeness - Page 161:
      A husband's proper concern is not his own "headship" but his wife's "bodyship".
    • 1996, Rebecca Groothuis, Good News for Women: A Biblical Picture of Gender Equality:
      [...] and to a husband and his wife, has provoked an inordinate preoccupation with a “chain of command” concept of headship, when the emphasis would more constructively and biblically be placed on an understanding of “bodyship”—that is, our unity and interdependence as one body, whether in marriage or in the larger family of God.
    • 2015, Adam Joseph, Eyehole Psychodrama:
      They, the tendencies, are practices for supreme impulse control—an S.O.S. beacon in motion, the ailments of my intelligence, and the neurotic behavioral signaling to the rest of the outside world that's hidden in my bodyship's automatism!

Related terms edit