uncoffined

[uhn-kaw-find, -kof-ind]

adjective

1. not put into a coffin.

   an uncoffined corpse.

Word History and Origins

Origin of uncoffined¹

First recorded in 1640–50; un- ¹ + coffin + -ed ³

Example Sentences

John was destined, like Thomas Hardy’s Drummer Hodge, to rest “uncoffined” until 1992, when his remains supposedly were found in Chalk Pit Wood—though there is still some doubt about that claim.

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Seem'd all on fire that chapel proud, Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffined lie, Each baron, for a sable shroud, Sheathed in his iron panoply.

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Uncoffined, un-kof′ind, adj. not put into a coffin.

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Of the human bodies, some were seen with their bowels protruding, others with the flesh all consumed, and the blackened skeletons smoking; some with headless trunks and severed extremities; some bodies burned to cinders, others reduced to ashes; many bloated and swollen by suffocation, and several lying in the last distorted position of convulsing torture; brief and violent was their passage from life to death, and rude and melancholy was their sepulcher—'unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.'

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Day after day passed away, the boat sailed on, her track marked by the bodies of those committed to their uncoffined graves.

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