Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The ashes that remain after cremation of a corpse.
Wiktionary
- n. Cremated remains of a deceased person.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the remains of a dead body after cremation
Etymologies
- Blend of cremated and remains. Apparently a euphemism used by undertakers. (Wiktionary)
- Blend of cremated, past participle of cremate and remains. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I am writing to you to object to the word cremains, which was used by your representative when he met with my mother and me two days after my father's death.”
“In fact, my father himself, who was a professor of English and is now being called the cremains, would have pointed out to you the alliteration in Porta Potti and the rhyme in pooper-scooper.”
The Huffington Post: New York Review: The Collected Stories Of Lydia Davis
“Seriously, a company call Lifetime, I think in Illinois, that takes the carbon from cremains, which is the lingo for "cremated remains," and turns them into actual diamonds that people are wearing as jewelry.”
“Disposing or storing of the ashes, called cremains, has become a more creative exercise as well.”
“Attorney Neal Gordon -- the trustee assign to resolve the debts of the family-owned business that started in 1920 -- said finding the cremains was a surprise and unsettling.”
“In fact, my father himself, who was a professor of English and is now being called the cremains, would have pointed out to you the alliteration in”
“Unbelievably, the term "cremains" is the preferred nomenclature of the Cremation Association of North America (I looked this up).”
The Huffington Post: New York Review: The Collected Stories Of Lydia Davis
“The "cremains," in lipstick-size capsules, are on a rocket launched from a Lockheed L-1011 airplane over Grand Canary Island.”
“Then she discovered Art From Ashes, a Web company that incorporates a teaspoon of pet or human "cremains" into luminous artwork.”
“The cost: $12 500 for the full "cremains," or up to three kilos of ashes.”
More and More People Want to be Stardust Memories | Impact Lab
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cremains’.
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Phonestheme: CR- (or KR-)
Grateful credit to pterodactyl and http://reocities.com/SoHo/Studios/9783/phond1.html.
crook, crack, crane, cremains, cranberries, crimp, crow, crunch, crash, creak, croak, cronk and 94 more...
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EN - newSPEAK
Buzzwords of our time
actionable, administrivia, advermation, agreeance, backbone provider, back-sourcing, baked in, bandwidth, barn raising, Barneyware, belly-buttons, Below Zeros and 1078 more...
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Portmanteau words
Words created by blending the sounds and meanings of two pre-existing words.
(The older or the more commonly accepted/understood, the better IMO.)smog, tangelo, motel, telethon, blog, paratrooper, breathalyzer, internet, cremains, moped, chortle, camcorder and 4 more...
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Neologisms
'New' words.
neurogami, sexting, plussies, plussy, churnalism, hecka, greenwashing, greenwash, Blogistan, diactrize, subsume, cachebusting and 27 more...
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portmanteaus
slithy, chortle, mimsy, galumph, maffluent, smog, motel, momentaneous, splisters, swifting, editated, splatter and 73 more...
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No Dearth of Deadly Designations
catafalque, cenotaph, necropolis, sepulcher, sarcophagus, mausoleum, reliquary, ossuary, necrosis, cadaver, cadaverous, pyre and 103 more...
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Rubbies
Words and things that rub me wrong
eclectic, canon, flesh, irregardless, conversate, can't, mandatory, war on christmas, male bonding, pissa, parochial, infallible and 98 more...
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Myriadmiration
Neologisms ala Wordnik.com. Directly below are links to some other New Word lists... pease suggest yours to add!
Ne(word)er by whichbe
fake words by sionnach
frivolous uni...obstacular, frenemy, delayering, playgue, abjective, contradictionary, sarchasm, goggly, ecolect, disimagine, alligavate, sniboluous and 330 more...
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vinyl's Words
deliverator, finna, metric fuckton, fag, hyphy, ginormous, sacrilicious, fantabulous, macaca, n-word, pterodactyl, genious and 560 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Having: C; m; e
Goodies pulled from a list I've compiled of most-every word having these letters in common — It's going take to take a long, long time to actually get through (and I may want to extend it lat...
chamber, chimney, compesce, imperch, ipom�ic, lambency, premier cru, recumbence, simnelcake, succumbence, umbeschew, almacle and 631 more...
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personal distaste
good grief, I'm getting irritable.
salvo, taboo, redoubtable, foment, intransigence, disingenuous, infarction, obviate, junta, aetiology, expedited, gerrymandering and 201 more...
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hober's Words
anglosphere, wiki, slither, cylon, satchel, faustian, ragamuffin, frak, salient, fervid, tartan, snowclone and 299 more...
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aozuas's Words
sense data, hyperreality, brouhaha, ibid, apophenia, fnord, lackadaisical, schadenfreude, bildungsroman, ready-made, readymade, tergiversar and 654 more...
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Phrases and words I didn't know
give up the ghost, ninja'd, coal-hole, hotting up, chancer, clave, salaryman, turf accountant, cremains, autoclave, hummingbird mind, gank and 177 more...
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Death
postmortem, antemortem, casketing, cadaveric, entombment, inurnment, casket coach, cremains, disinterment, epitaph, bequest, catacombs and 59 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cremains.
hernesheir I once did bench-work for a silversmith who made silver and gold amulets for just that purpose. A one-off creation - the cremains were his neice's and the amulets were to go to her dearest friends. Killed in a car accident at age 16. Nov 17, 2011
bilby On a long train trip through Russia we stopped at a lonely village station. Late, 2am maybe. Still, because it was a junction there was a 20-minute stop and the train soon filled with locals selling their wares. Or should I say ware: cranberries. In buckets, in tubs, in glass jars. Just plain fresh cranberries. It was sadly indicative of the lack of diversity in the village economy, not to mention the desperation of the times; surely, as I observed, there's little chance of selling buckets o' berries to sleepy drunks on the night train. Even now looking at a map I can't identify precisely which town it was. Anyway travel companion Marloes and I were happy calling it Craningrad. Jun 8, 2011
sionnach Speaking of cranberries, they seem to me to be the DSK of the orchard. One imagines the scenes of dismay down in Fruitville when the cranberries move into the neighborhood, with each of the other fruits nervously anticipating the inevitable rape scenario under which they will be forced to submit to the voracious sexual appetites of some marauding band of cranberries, to produce, in due course, some appalling bastard hybrid, the juice of which will inevitably end up taking up space on our supermarket shelves.
Ask any apple or raisin. They can tell you what it's like. Grapes and peaches too. It's like post-war Berlin down in the fruit groves, I tell you. Nobody is safe from the rapacious cranberry clan. Jun 8, 2011
sionnach Words are inadequate to capture my deep loathing for this word. Of the many atrocities perpetrated against the English language on a daily basis, this surely has to be one of the worst.
And while it may have been coined before the cranberry growers of America launched their shameless attempt to annex each of the other fruits, one by one, by deploying the prefix 'cr' or 'cran' (cranapple, craisins), now that 'craisins' scream at us from supermarket shelves across the land, no thinking human being should stoop to using the word 'cremains' ever again. Do you really want to create the indelible impression that your loved one's remains could be consumed as a zesty relish with your thanksgiving dinner?
Thank you for indulging my rant. Feb 25, 2007