Sarcophagus

Quick meaning: Sarcophagus is a noun meaning A stone coffin, often with its exterior inscribed, or decorated with sculpture.

Meaning

A stone coffin, often with its exterior inscribed, or decorated with sculpture.

More Meanings

1. The cement and steel structure that encases the destroyed nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
2. A type of wine cooler (“a piece of equipment used to keep wine chilled”) shaped like a sarcophagus (sense 1).
3. (transitive) To enclose (a corpse, etc.) in a sarcophagus (noun sense 1).
4. (obsolete except Ancient Greece, historical) A kind of limestone used by the Ancient Greeks for coffins, so called because it was thought to consume the flesh of corpses.

Example Sentences

One meets vvith many other Figures of Meleager in the ancient Baſſo Relievo's, and on the Sides of the Sarcophagi, or Funeral Monuments.

On closer inspection the coffins seemed to be more like sarcophagi. They stood about waist high and were constructed of what appeared to be white marble, […]

On the lids of those Tombs; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in torment; the lids open there; they are to be shut at the Day of Judgment, through Eternity.

[T]his (venter impiorum inſaturabilis [the insatiable belly of the wicked]) in foure & tvventie houres conſumes many carkaſſes of Fiſhes and Fovvles, and generally tvvice a day all the fleſh therein interred; ſo true a Sarcophagus is the belly: […]

Word Forms

• sarcophagi
• sarcophaguses
• sarcophagusses
• sarcophagusing
• sarcophagused

Synonyms for sarcophagus

Depending on context, synonyms include sarcophagise, sarcophagize.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include casing, coke, shelter, hull, shell, casket.

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