Definition of "rigor mortis" []

• Muscular stiffening following death. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It was spreadeagled with rigor mortis and the body had swelled enough in decomposition so that buttons had started to pop off the shirt, which the night before had been pajama-loose."
• "The pathologist uses various time-dependent processes to estimate the time of death: the body cools at a characteristic rate, rigor mortis sets in at a particular time, and so on."
• "A quick cut; then Pretty Boy Christopher, naked and hard, pointing his thing at the camera, the head nearly eclipsing the screen like a giant battering ram, white background borders looking just like parted lips and teeth holding the image intact through rigor mortis —"