resurrectionist

noun

1. One who sells cadavers to anatomists, surgeons, etc., especially by exhuming corpses from graves; a graverobber.

   historical

   One... who makes open profession of dealing in dead bodies and is well known by the name of the Resurrectionist.

2. A believer in a future bodily resurrection.

   Those who make the rest of the dead... to be the same with the remnant slain by the sword... to be consistent, ought to make the first resurrectionists the same with the armies in heaven.

   1830, A. Addis, Theory of Prophecy, Prol. p.xliv

3. One who resurrects an abandoned idea, practice, etc.; a revivalist.

   We have no taste for enacting the part of literary resurrectionists.

4. One who sells repaired or reconditioned goods; a refurbisher.

   obsolete

   Some of the habitual buyers [of ostrich feathers] have nicknames, and those who do a local business and buy for re-selling are known as ‘resurrectionists’.

Where it comes from

From resurrection (“the act of rising from the dead and becoming alive again”) + -ist (“forms agents of cause; forms adherents of a belief”), coined alongside resurrection man.

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry resurrectionist (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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