WORD HISTORY: Sarcophagus

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.