MEANING
The cooling of a body after death toward the surrounding temperature as thermoregulation ceases.
Use it for
Postmortem temperature assessment; environmental effects on a recovered body; uncertain chronology considered alongside other forensic evidence.Use cooling as one qualified forensic observation, not as independent confirmation of death or an exact time-of-death clock.
Words that belong together
- measure algor mortis
- assess algor mortis
- rate of algor mortis
On the page
The examiner assessed algor mortis alongside the other findings.
Cold water had complicated the interpretation of algor mortis.
Her notes on algor mortis included the room temperature.
Nearby words
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- algor mortis
Usage notes
Primary category: horror. Forensic; cooling depends on conditions and is not a universally fixed hourly rate. Hot surroundings complicate the ordinary cooling description. Usually uncountable in this sense; no routine plural.
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