• (RP) IPA: /ˈkɒfɪn/
• (America) IPA: /ˈkɔfɪn/
• (America, cot-caught, Canada) IPA: /ˈkɑfɪn/

coffin (plural coffins)

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

   Synonyms: casket

   • 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.

2. (cartomancy) The eighth Lenormand card.
3. (obsolete) A basket.
   • 1382–1395, John Wycliffe et al. (translators), Matthew 14:20

     And all ate, and were filled. And they took the reliefs of broken gobbets, twelve coffins full.

4. (archaic) A casing or crust, or a mold, of pastry, as for a pie.
   • c. 1588–1593, William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act V, scene ii]:

     Of the paste a coffin I will rear.

   • 1596, The Good Huswife's Jewell

     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.

5. (obsolete) A conical paper bag, used by grocers.
6. The hollow crust or hoof of a horse's foot, below the coronet, in which is the coffin bone.
7. A storage container for nuclear waste.

• French: cercueil
• German: Sarg
• Italian: bara, cassa da morto, feretro
• Portuguese: caixão, ataúde
• Russian: гроб
• Spanish: ataúd, féretro, cajón (Argentina), urna (Venezuela), panteón (Mexico)

coffin (coffins, present participle coffining; past and past participle coffined)

1. (transitive) To place in a coffin.
   • 2007, Barbara Everett, "Making and Breaking in Shakespeare's Romances," London Review of Books, 29:6, page 21:

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

• encoffin

• German: einsargen

1. Surname