SARCOPHAGUS

A stone coffin, typically adorned with a sculpture or inscription.

This sounds innocuous enough until you start to explore its word origins, when it takes on the aspect of a third-rate horror story. It is from Greek sark–, flesh, plus –phagos, eating. Flesh-eating stone? The first reference in English to the word is from a translation of the works of the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who said that the Greeks believed that a type of limestone quarried from an area near Troy would dissolve flesh and so was suitable for making coffins. Pliny is not the most reliable of reporters (he also mentioned dog-headed people and elephants who wrote Greek) and it’s more probable that the Greek name was a figurative reference to the speed by which the bodies of those interred in porous limestone coffins decayed to bones.

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2009. All rights reserved. Contact me if you want to reproduce this piece, but first see my advice page, which also has notes about linking. Your comments and corrections are welcome.