sarcophagus means A stonen coffin, often with its exterior inscribed, or decorated with sculpture. It carries an Arena rating of 1788, earned across 37 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, sarcophagus ranks #2 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #10 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #493 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #921 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
sarcophagus is pronounced /sɑːˈkɒfəɡəs/.
Why “sarcophagus” is a great word
A stone coffin, often inscribed or decorated, or a structure resembling one. From Latin sarcophagus ('grave; sarcophagus; flesh-eating'), from Ancient Greek σαρκοφάγος (sarkophágos, 'flesh-eating; sarcophagus'), from σαρκός (sarkós, 'flesh') + -φάγος (-phágos, 'eater'), originally describing a type of limestone thought to consume flesh, used for coffins. Unlike a wooden 'coffin,' which is hidden in the earth, or a 'cinerarium,' which holds only the aftermath of flame, a sarcophagus is a monument meant to be seen—a vessel of permanence carved from the very stone intended to hasten decay. It is the Egyptian pharaoh sealed in painted limestone; the Roman matron reclining on her marble lid; the Victorian copy, moss-grown and rain-streaked, in a country churchyard. The word remembers what we tried to forget: that even stone has its hunger, and we build our most elaborate containers for what we cannot keep.
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.
noun
- A stonen coffin, often with its exterior inscribed, or decorated with sculpture.
- The cement and steel structure that encases the destroyed nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
- A type of wine cooler (“a piece of equipment used to keep wine chilled”) shaped like a sarcophagus (sense 1).
- A kind of limestone used by the Ancient Greeks for coffins, so called because it was thought to consume the flesh of corpses.
verb
- To enclose (a corpse, etc.) in a sarcophagus (noun sense 1).
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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