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coroner

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈkɒ.ɹə.nə(ɹ)//
  • United States//ˈkɔɹ.ə.nɚ//
  • //ˈkɑɹ.ə.nɚ//

A public official who presides over an inquest into unnatural deaths, and who may have (or historically had) additional powers such as investigating cases of treasure trove.

noun

  1. 1

    A public official who presides over an inquest into unnatural deaths, and who may have (or historically had) additional powers such as investigating cases of treasure trove.

    The coroner confirmed the cause of death.

  2. 2

    A medical doctor who performs autopsies and determines time and cause of death from a scientific standpoint.

    A report from the coroner was presented in court.

  3. 3

    The administrative head of a sheading.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱorh₂-der. Ancient Greek κορώνη (korṓnē)bor. Latin corōna Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin corōnāre Old French coronerbor. Middle English coroner English coroner From Middle English coroner, from Old French curuner, from Medieval Latin custōs placitōrum corōnae (“guardian of the crown's pleas”). The function was originally to protect royal properties. Compare crowner. Doublet of crown.

Forms

plural
coroners
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).