Library / English Dictionary

    COFFIN

    Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

     I. (noun) 

    Sense 1

    Meaning:

    Box in which a corpse is buried or crematedplay

    Synonyms:

    casket; coffin

    Classified under:

    Nouns denoting man-made objects

    Hypernyms ("coffin" is a kind of...):

    box (a (usually rectangular) container; may have a lid)

    Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "coffin"):

    bier (a coffin along with its stand)

    sarcophagus (a stone coffin (usually bearing sculpture or inscriptions))

    Derivation:

    coffin (place into a coffin)

     II. (verb) 

    Sense 1

    Meaning:

    Place into a coffinplay

    Example:

    her body was coffined

    Classified under:

    Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

    Hypernyms (to "coffin" is one way to...):

    lay; place; pose; position; put; set (put into a certain place or abstract location)

    Sentence frames:

    Somebody ----s something
    Somebody ----s somebody

    Derivation:

    coffin (box in which a corpse is buried or cremated)

    Credits

     Context examples: 

    Poor Eleanor was absent, and at such a distance as to return only to see her mother in her coffin.

    (Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

    The other tomb has a 6-meter burial shaft "leading to four side chambers," which contained artifacts including fragments of wooden coffins.

    (Discovery of Two Tombs Dating Back 3,500 Years Announced in Egypt, VOA)

    And if you’ve money, my son, and know how to handle it and spread it, you can do anything! Now, you don’t think it likely that a man who could do anything is going to wear his breeches out sitting in the stinking hold of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden, mouldy old coffin of a China coaster.

    (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

    And the coffin was set among the hills, and one of the dwarfs always sat by it and watched.

    (Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

    This last blow overcame her, and she knelt by Beaufort’s coffin weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber.

    (Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

    Arthur stepped forward hesitatingly; Van Helsing said to me:—You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in that coffin? "It was."

    (Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

    The coffin shall remain in the house until it comes.

    (His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

    Using the sled-lashing for a heaving rope, and with the aid of the dogs, he hoisted the coffin to the top of the scaffold.

    (White Fang, by Jack London)

    We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember well, where the service was read consigning it to the dust.

    (David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

    Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.

    (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)


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