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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.〔See also berceau, couffin and cophinus at Wiktionary〕 Speakers of North American English may make a distinction between ''coffin'' and ''casket''. A coffin is generally understood to denote a funerary box having six sides, while a casket generally denotes a four-sided (almost always rectangular) box. ==Etymology== First attested in English 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Palaeolexicon )〕 Any box used to bury the dead in is a coffin. Use of the word "casket" in this sense began as a euphemism introduced by the undertaker's trade in North America; a "casket" was originally a box for jewelry.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=casket, coffin (nn.) )〕 North Americans may draw a distinction between "coffins" and "caskets", using coffin to refer to a tapered hexagonal or octagonal (also considered to be anthropoidal in shape) box used for a burial and casket to refer to a rectangular burial box 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〔() 〕 in North America) are called urns. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「coffin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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