A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, for either burial or cremation.
Coffins are sometimes referred to as caskets, particularly in American English. Any box in which the dead are buried is a coffin, and while a casket was originally regarded as a box for jewelry, use of the word "casket" in this sense began as a euphemism introduced by the undertaker's trade.[1] A distinction is commonly drawn between "coffins" and "caskets", using "coffin" to refer to a tapered hexagonal or octagonal (also considered to be anthropoidal in shape) box and "casket" to refer to a rectangular box, often with a split lid used for viewing the deceased as seen in the picture.[2] Receptacles for cremated and cremulated human ashes (sometimes called cremains)[3][4] are called urns.
- ^ "casket, coffin (nn.)". Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Bartleby.com.
- ^ Mattioli, Dana (Feb 24, 2010). "Casket Makers Dig In as Sales Take Hit". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ "Departmental Honors" (PDF). Utc.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-06-06. Retrieved 2014-03-10.
- ^ funerals.org. Archived December 27, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.