Coffins

A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation.

The word took two different paths, cofin in Old French originally meaning basket, became coffin in English and became couffin in modern French which nowadays means a cradle. A distinction is often made between coffin and casket: the latter is generally understood to denote a four-sided (almost always rectangular) funerary box, while a coffin is usually six-sided. However, coffins having a one-piece side with a curve at the shoulder instead of a join are more commonly used in the United Kingdom (UK).

First attested in English in 1380, the word coffin derives from the Old French cofin, from Latin cophinus, which means a basket, which is the latinisation of the Greek κόφινος (kophinos), "basket". The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek ko-pi-na, written in Linear B syllabic script.

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. 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 above. Receptacles for cremated and cremulated human ashes (sometimes called cremains) are called urns.

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