Chrysti The Wordsmith: Coffin & Casket

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. When someone is laid to rest for the final sleep is it in a casket or is it in a coffin. Is there any difference between the two. What are the stories behind these words. Let's first take a look at the life history of cough and Greek in origin. It originally meant basket of reeds rushes or bark. By the time it found its way to English in the mid 13th hundreds it referred to box or chest as well as basket by the 15 hundreds kaufen came to rest on the wooden burial box. And today that's its primary definition. Casket is a French word which from the 14th through the 17th hundreds referred to a small ornamented box for jewels money or letters in the mid 1800s American undertakers started replacing the common word coffin with the more delicate term casket. This suggested that the deceased like a precious gem could slumber forever in his casket a container named for an

exquisitely adorned jewelry box so casket developed into an American term for what was earlier and commonly called a coffin. This semantic shift reflects the universal tendency to euphemize topics such as death and burial. Considered frightening or unpleasant. I'm Christie the wordsmith from Montana State University in Bozeman at KGO F Am Christie the wordsmith a sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.