sarcophagus

Meanings

1. A stone coffin, often with its exterior inscribed, or decorated with sculpture.
2. The cement and steel structure that encases the destroyed nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
3. A type of wine cooler (“a piece of equipment used to keep wine chilled”) shaped like a sarcophagus (sense 1).
4. A kind of limestone used by the Ancient Greeks for coffins, so called because it was thought to consume the flesh of corpses.

1. To enclose (a corpse, etc.) in a sarcophagus (noun sense 1).

Etymology

The noun is borrowed from Latin sarcophagus (“grave; sarcophagus; flesh-eating, carnivorous”), from Ancient Greek σᾰρκοφᾰ́γος (sărkophắgos, “sarcophagus; flesh-eating, carnivorous”) (so named from λῐ́θος σᾰρκοφᾰ́γος (lĭ́thos sărkophắgos, literally “flesh-eating stone”) a type of limestone found at Assos in Troas (now Behramkale, Turkey) thought to consume the flesh of corpses, and thus used to make coffins), from σαρκός (sarkós) (the genitive form of σάρξ (sárx, “flesh; body”), from Proto-Indo-European *twerḱ- (“to carve; to cut off, trim”)) + -φάγος (-phágos, suffix meaning ‘eater (of); eating’) (from ἔφαγον (éphagon, “to devour, eat”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂g- (“to allot, distribute; to divide”)). The plural form sarcophagi is borrowed from Latin sarcophagī. The verb is derived from the noun.