Is the term "Dead bodies" incorrect? [closed]

Recently, a guest faculty at our college delivered a lecture on the most commonly made errors in English. He pointed out the following sentence:

There were 5 dead bodies.

He said that the above sentence is incorrect and it should be:

There were 5 bodies.

As body is implying that the person is already dead, so there is no need to mention it explicitly.

So, is the first sentence incorrect?

Solution 1:

The usage 'dead body' is not incorrect. Though the word 'body' can be a synonym of 'dead body', it does not have always the meaning 'dead body'. From the MW:

body (plural bodies) Learner's definition of BODY

1[count]

a: a person's or animal's whole physical self

the human body
a part of the body
Her body is very muscular.
A bird's body is covered in feathers.

— often used before another noun

body weight/fat
body parts
A person's normal body temperature [=(Brit) blood heat] is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees Celsius.

b : a dead person or animal

The body [=corpse] was shipped home for burial.

c : the main physical part of a person or animal

This species has a black body and a white head.
She held her arms tightly against her body.

So 'body' can be a live body too!

Solution 2:

One of the meanings of "body" is "corpse". As it can also mean "torso" or even "person", it's only redundant if the "dead" aspect can be inferred from context. Without context the example sentence has no redundancy and is perfectly correct. If there was some context to set up the meaning, it would still be perfectly grammatical - redundancy of this type is a matter of style not grammar. "Dead corpses" would be completely redundant and is unidiomatic, but "dead bodies" is in common use.

An arbitrarily-selected dictionary (Cambridge) has over a dozen definitions for body as a noun (some quite close), so it would seem reasonable to risk redundancy rather than ambiguity.