ADIPOCERE/ˈædɪpəʊˌsɪə/

Post-mortem waxy fat.

This is mostly met with by forensic medical experts, hence its other name of mortuary fat. It’s a greyish-white or yellow waxy substance that forms from the fat of certain parts of dead bodies, especially if they have been buried in wet places. The changes occur quite quickly and can accompany a form of natural mummification. It’s known to occur in ancient bog bodies and in those preserved in ice, such as the Alpine man Ötzi. It’s also encountered sometimes by archaeologists investigating relatively modern sites containing burials; an example was the difficult and harrowing excavation in the crypt of Christ Church Cathedral in Spitalfields, London, in the early 1980s. The word derives, via French, in which language the word was first employed in the late eighteenth century, from the Latin adipis, “fat” (as in adipose tissue), and cera, “wax”.

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