epitaph

What it means

1. An inscription on a gravestone in memory of the deceased.

   2 more examples

   The church itself, or at all events the squat and tiny tower, has not altered much since Lamb saw it. But the epitaphs have gone. Search among the ivies and yews of the shady little churchyard will discover a number of flat, weatherworn slabs of stone, but the verses and the signatures have vanished.

   1909, Eric Parker, chapter XXIII, in Highways and Byways in Surrey

   Ayot St Lawrence's most famous inhabitant, George Bernard Shaw, moved into the New Rectory in 1906 because, it is said, of a gravestone epitaph in the churchyard. This recorded the death of a woman who lived to be 70 with the comment 'Her time was short'. Shaw thought that a place that considered a life of 70 years short was the right place for him.

   1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 44

2. A poem or other short text written in memory of a deceased person.

   338 ♦ Live your life so that your epitaph could read, “No regrets.”

   1991, Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life, H. Jackson Brown Jr., published by Rutledge Hill Press

   1 more example

   Nam vinci in amore turpissimum putant, not only living, but when their friends are dead, with tombs and monuments, nenias, epitaphs, elegies, inscriptions, pyramids, obelisks, statues, images, pictures, histories, poems, annals, feasts, anniversaries, many ages after (as Plato's scholars did) they will parentare still, omit no good office that may tend to the preservation of their names, honours, and eternal memory.

   1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], “Honest Objects of Love”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC

In a sentence

The church itself, or at all events the squat and tiny tower, has not altered much since Lamb saw it. But the epitaphs have gone. Search among the ivies and yews of the shady little churchyard will discover a number of flat, weatherworn slabs of stone, but the verses and the signatures have vanished.

1909, Eric Parker, chapter XXIII, in Highways and Byways in Surrey

Where it comes from

1. Ancient Greekἐπιτάφιος“relating to a funeral”
2. Late Latinepitaphium“eulogy”
3. Old Frenchepitafe
4. Englishepitaph

From Old French epitafe, from Late Latin epitaphium (“eulogy”), from Ancient Greek ἐπιτάφιος (epitáphios, “relating to a funeral”), from ἐπί (epí, “over”) + τάφος (táphos, “tomb”). By surface analysis epi- + -taph. Compare epitaph.