coffin

plural coffins · alternative archaic cophin · alternative archaic coffyn

1. A closed box in which the body of a dead person is placed for burial.

   Plans to carry the Queen's coffin from Edinburgh to London by rail were scrapped in favour of travel in a Royal Air Force cargo aircraft.

   2022 September 21, “Network News: Decision not to use Royal Train sharply divides opinion”, in RAIL, number 966, page 8

   2 more examples

   […] Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, / Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, / Night and day journeys a coffin.

   1865, Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, in Sequel to Drum-Taps: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d and other poems

   20 May 2018, Hadley Freeman in The Guardian, Is Meghan Markle the American the royals have needed all along? I’d always found the royals a cold proposition, Diana excepted, but the sight of that little boy, his head bent, not daring to look up at his mother’s coffin in front of him was, and remains, genuinely heartbreaking.

   Synonyms: casket, pine box, wooden coat, wooden kimono, wooden overcoat, wooden surtout, pine box

2. cartomancyThe eighth Lenormand card.
3. archaicA casing or crust, or a mold, of pastry, as for a pie.

   Of the paste a coffin I will rear.

   c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]

   1 more example

   Take your mallard and put him into the iuyce of the sayde Onyons, and season him with pepper, and salte, cloues and mace, then put your Mallard into the coffin with the saide iuyce of the onyons.

   1596, The Good Huswife's Jewell

4. obsoleteA conical paper bag, used by grocers.

   The smoke of this Hearbe, which they receaue at the mouth through certaine coffins, suche as the Grocers do vse to put in their Spices.

   1577, John Frampton, Joyful News out of the New Found World

5. The hollow crust or hoof of a horse's foot, below the coronet, in which is the coffin bone.
6. A storage container for nuclear waste.
7. A combination fence obstacle where the horse jumps a set of rails, strides downhill to a ditch, and then goes back uphill to another jump.

present singular third person coffins · participle present coffining · participle past coffined · past coffined · alternative archaic cophin · alternative archaic coffyn

1. transitiveTo place in a coffin.

   Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining.

   1941, Emily Carr, chapter 19, in Klee Wyck

   1 more example

   The chest in which she is coffined washes ashore and is brought to the Lord Cerimon.

   2007, Barbara Everett, “Making and Breaking in Shakespeare's Romances”, in London Review of Books, 29:6, page 21

   Synonyms: encoffin

plural coffins · alternative coffan · alternative coffen · alternative goffin · alternative goffan · alternative goffen

1. CornwallobsoletebusinessAn exploratory trench used when first digging a mine.
2. CornwallbroadlyA deep ditch.

plural Coffins · alternative Coffing

1. A surname.

   Mike Coffin, from the University of Tasmania, has made the journey to the surrounding waters seven times to conduct scientific research, and is sceptical about the existence of major exports from the island to the US.

   2025 April 4, Ottlie Mitchell, Tiffanie Turnbull, “'Nowhere's safe': How an island of penguins ended up on Trump tariff list”, in BBC News, archived from the original on 06 Apr 2025, retrieved 04 Sep 2026