Casket for Coffin Is an American Euphemism
A casket is a small box, and in America a coffin. Britain kept the two meanings apart.
A casket is a small ornamental box for jewels or valuables. American English extended it to a burial container in the nineteenth century, as a gentler alternative to *coffin*. Nathaniel Hawthorne complained about the euphemism at the time. Britain never adopted it, and a British casket still holds jewellery.
- A small ornamental box. *A jewel casket.*
- A coffin (American). *An open casket.*
- Something precious. *A casket of memories.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | casket | A carved casket. |
| Plural | caskets | Two caskets. |
| Related | coffin | A pine coffin. |
| Related | reliquary | A gold reliquary. |
| Related | chest | A sea chest. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The jewels lay in a casket.British sense.
- An open casket service.American funerals.
- Coffins taper, caskets are rectangular.The trade distinction in America.
Funeral vocabulary
- Coffin — traditionally tapered at head and foot
- Casket — rectangular, and the usual American word
- Pall — the cloth draped over it
- Bier — the stand or frame it rests on
- Catafalque — a raised platform for a lying in state
Probably from Old French *cassette*, a small box, a diminutive of *casse*, a case. The funeral sense is American, from the 1840s.
Casket or coffin?
In America a casket is rectangular and a coffin tapered. In Britain coffin is the usual word for both.
Why did the euphemism appear?
Nineteenth-century American undertakers preferred a word without the associations of *coffin*, and writers of the time noticed the change.