sarcophagus

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“
In these chambers in addition to a room for a sarcophagus were associated rooms in which every imaginable need of the dead was stored: food, clothing, furniture, jewelry, weapons Adjacent to the royal tomb favored nobles received permission to build their own tombs, similarly equipped but on a smaller, less grandiose scale than that of the pharaoh.

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Definitions (7)

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  1. noun A stone coffin, often inscribed or decorated with sculpture.
  2. Word History
    Sarcophagus, our term for a stone coffin located above ground and often decorated, has a macabre origin befitting a macabre thing. The word comes to us from Latin and Greek, having been derived in Greek from sarx, "flesh,” and phagein, "to eat.” The Greek word sarkophagos meant "eating flesh,” and in the phrase lithos ("stone”) sarkophagos it denoted a limestone that was thought to decompose the flesh of corpses placed in it. Used by itself as a noun the Greek term came to mean "coffin.” The term was carried over into Latin, where sarcophagus was used in the phrase lapis ("stone”) sarcophagus, referring to the same stone as in Greek. Sarcophagus used as a noun in Latin meant "coffin of any material.” This Latin word was borrowed into English, first being recorded in 1601 with reference to the flesh-consuming stone and then in 1705 with reference to a stone coffin.

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Examples

  • The remains repose in their original sarcophagus, which is bound by broad girders of steel. —  The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi
  • The red granite sides of the sarcophagus were as high as Emerson's head. —  The Mummy Case
  • Propped up against the sarcophagus was an old yellow scroll of papyrus, and in front of it, in a wooden armchair, sat the owner of the room, his head thrown back, his widely-opened eyes directed in a horrified stare to the crocodile above him, and his blue, thick lips puffing loudly with every expiration. —  Round the Red Lamp
  • Reactor Four, however, was buttressed and encased by ten stories of lead-and-steel shielding called a sarcophagus, a tomb, but it always struck Arkady, especially at night, as the steel mask of a steel giant buried to the neck. —  Wolves Eat Dogs
  • In these chambers in addition to a room for a sarcophagus were associated rooms in which every imaginable need of the dead was stored: food, clothing, furniture, jewelry, weapons Adjacent to the royal tomb favored nobles received permission to build their own tombs, similarly equipped but on a smaller, less grandiose scale than that of the pharaoh. —  Civilization and Beyond Learning from History
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin, from Greek sarkophagos, coffin, from (lithos) sarkophagos, limestone that consumed the flesh of corpses laid in it : sarx, sark-, flesh + -phagos, -phagous.

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  1. Formerly also sarcophage, from French sarcophage = Spanish sarcófago = Portuguese sarcophago = Italian sarcofago = Dutch sarcophaag = German sarcophag = Danish Swedish sarkofag, a coffin, sarcophagus; from Latin sarcophagus, adjective, sc. lapis, a kind of limestone, as a noun a coffin, sepulcher, from Greek σαρκοφάγος, adjective, flesh-eating, carnivorous (σαρκοφάγος λίθος, a limestone so called, literally ‘flesh-consuming stone,’ so named from a supposed property of consuming the flesh of corpses laid in it); hence, as a noun, a coffin of such stone: see sarcophagous.
 

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/sɑrˈkɑfəgəs/
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