CITY of the SILENT: GRAVE TERMINOLOGY

		  (An Internet Feature by Joel GAzis-SAx) 
		      www.best.com/~gazissax/silence/ 

"Cemeteries are beautiful places. They are meant to be enjoyed by the living.
 Respect visiting hours and floral regulations...do not disturb mourners..."

"Don't be in a rush to join the dead...while suicide destroys all future pain,
 it also destroys all future happiness. So dare to face the unknown challenges
 of Eternity..."

				DEFINITIONS  

Burial Ground:	 A "cemetery" containing the remains of Native Americans.

Catacomb:    A Roman subterranean burial ground where Christians formerly 
 indulged in symbolic cannibalism among the proscribed bodies of friends, 
 relatives, and countrymen. Now used to name any underground burial place
 with walking space, including the basements of mausoleums and the sewers 
 of Paris. An eerie or demonic atmosphere often prevails.

Cemetery:     A burial ground containing the remains of non-Native Americans.
  The term derives from the Greek koimeterion, literally a "sleeping place"
  or "dormitory." Just like college housing directors, cemetery operators seek
  to cram as many bodies into as little space as they can. Cemetery decoration
  and upkeep, however, are usually much superior to those of dormitories and 
  seldom subjected to damage by the residents.

Cenotaph:	Literally "an empty tomb."  Cenotaphs are raised when the 
 deceased has had the lack of foresight to die within the sight or the 
 pocket-book of the one raising the monument.

Columbarium:	A columbarium was originally a dovecote or a place where the 
 birds came home after a hard day of desecrating sepulchres and statuary.  
 Modern morticians gave the name to a building with hundreds of little niches,
 in the wall for urns holding cremated remains.  Glass doors or other barriers
 prevent pigeons from coming home to roost in what would otherwise be suitable
 "pigeonholes."

Contumulation:	The sharing of a grave or a tomb. For some embattled relatives
 it represents the state of being closer in death than in life. 

Corpse:		From the Latin "corpus" meaning "a body."  Once it was not 
 considered unfortunate to be considered a "walking corpse" because it could 
 apply to someone who was still alive and in good health. But by the middle of
 the 18th century, all life had fled the word.  Note the relationship of the 
 word to "corps" (a body of men organized for the slaughter), or "corpulent"
 (referring to those possessing a large mound of otherwise dead material in 
 their midriff region), "corporal" (in the military, a non-com is more likely 
 to be killed in action), or "corporal punishment" (a disciplinary procedure
 ranging from a juvenile spanking up to keelhauling and flogging) and also
 "corporation" (a collection of bodies housed in structures not unlike and 
 about as lively as a "mausoleum."

Coffin:	   When Shakespeare spoke of "coffin-custard," he did not refer to
 the results of a botched embalming job, but a once-common pastry-covered 
 pie. The Greek kophinos was a lidded basket which, due to the transmutation
 of usage, became the lidded box used to store the after-effects of our once
 having lived. Printers used to call the frame which holds the type a coffin,
 perhaps signifying their dread of early censorship laws.

Crematorium:	A facility for the reduction of nonfunctional human bodies 
 into assorted air pollutants.  Cremationists are people who advocate the 
 practice.  A cremator is the individual who actually loads the body into 
 the furnace and scoops out the residue; it can also refer to the furnace 
 itself.  The obvious term for the end results of the cremation process
 is "cremains," but has not yet gained popular acceptance.

Cromlech:	Welsh for dolmen, see below. Literally and paradoxically 
 "a curved flat-rock."

Crypt:	   An underground vault, usually beneath a church, where believers
 sometimes hide their dead or their prayerful attitudes.  These structures 
 became popular after the rediscovery of the Roman catacombs in 1578.

Dolmen:		Breton for any Neolithic monument consisting of a large, flat 
 stone supported by two or more rocks (like a table).  It used to be believed 
 that such monuments were altars for human sacrifice or cannibal feasts. With
 the advent of modern day grave-robbing and archaeology, dolmen were discovered
 inside of burial mounds with the supposed meal underneath the table. Science
 concluded that they formed a vault and supposed that exposed versions were 
 either incomplete tombs or windblown remains.  Cromlechs and dolmen are the 
 same, but since French is considered more chic than Welsh, the latter term 
 is preferred by the scientific community these days.

Epitaph:	Originally a funeral oration (in Latin, epitaphium) which, 
 being a speech made by the living, was said "over the tomb." Families soon 
 made a practice of recording the good lines for posterity, avoiding the 
 inscription of the whole oration due to the high price of fine stonecutting. 
 It may be wise to write your own epitaph to avoid mischaracterizations or 
 cliches, though here you are at the mercy of your own folly and bad taste.

Hearse:	     A word with many mortuarial meanings.  One could, for example, 
 speak of the hearse carrying the hearse-enshrouded hearse in its 
 hearse while mourners murmured hearses at its passage on its way to the hearse.
 (Translation: The bier carries the funeral pall-enshrouded body in its coffin,
 while mourners murmur obsequies at its passage on its way to the grave.)  The
 word derives from the Old French word for harrow, a device dragged over plowed
 fields to break up clods.  Now it is used to signify the enlongated vehicle 
 used to carry clods on their final journey.

Inhumist:   Those among us who prefer to bury our dead in the ground instead
 of burning them, feeding them to wild animals, throwing them in the sea, or 
 eating them. Not to be confused with "inhumane," because the dead don't feel
 what we are doing to them.  For a time, exhumists generated a living wage by 
 following up on the work of inhumists and recycling what they found.  In the 
 past, they were called "grave-robbers" or "resurrectionists." Today they are
 called "archaeologists."

Lich:	    A quaint old term meaning body, either living or dead.  Lich is a 
 fine Old English term which inspired many hyphenated constructions like:
 Lich-bell (a bell rung before the corpse), lich-gate (the covered entrance to
 a cemetery where mourners waited for the arrival of the clergyman to conduct 
 the graveside service), lich-house (a mortuary), lich-lay (a tax to provide 
 for churchyards), lich-rest (a grave), and lich-stone (a stone upon which a 
 body could be placed to give the pall-bearers a rest).  Old English law held 
 that whatever way a lich passed became a lich-way or a public thoroughfare.  
 This undoubtably was a reason for survivors living at the end of private 
 roads on secluded estates to feel contempt towards the deceased. The practice
 has since been discontinued.

Mausoleum:     Named for Mausolus, King of Caria, whose wife, Artemisia, is 
 history's most remarkable example of a surviving relative who did not go 
 cheap on the grave monument!  The splendid tomb was one of the Seven Wonders 
 of the World, inspiring many imitators. It fell to the ravages of Crusaders 
 seeking stone for a fortress and pillagers working for the British Museum.

Megalith:    A "big rock."  Megaliths never fail to impress moderns who have
 been spoiled by heavy machinery. Fertile imaginations may overlook the 
 deviousness, imagination, and intelligence of our ancestors, who raised them
 by brute force, without the aid of any Startrek tractor beam.  Most famous 
 megaliths are not sepulchral at all, but appear just to fascinate cemetery 
 buffs visitors.

Monument:	A relic whose chief purpose is to jar those passing by to 
 remember a concluded event or life.  The chief form of resistance to this 
 mind control is to ignore it.

Mortuary:	A small scale facility for the production of "The Dearly 
 Departed" from the raw material of mere corpses.  Mortuaries also serve as 
 showrooms for coffins and a place of employment for morticians (formerly 
 called "undertakers.")

Mummy:	   A relative (not necessarilly female or an ancestor) who has been
 transformed into an elaborate wax (Persian mum) doll. Mummies resemble the 
 living except for the marked lack of water, giving buoyancy to the skin.

Ossuary:      The most elegant way to say "bone-pit" or "charnel house."

Placophobia:	Fear of tombstones.  Other notable cemetery dreads include: 
 taphephobia (fear of being buried alive) and necrophobia (fear of all dead 
 things)  See also taphophile.

Polyandrium:	An expensive word for a cemetery. The cost of maintaining such
 a term in the vocabulary has made the continuance of polyandriums prohibitive.
 Originally a cemetery for the victims of great battles, a notable producer of
 massed corpses.

Psychomancy:	Inviting the dead to grant advice to the living. Many believe
 the dead retain a great interest in mortal concerns and choose to bother them
 with their questions. When the dead decline to attend these insipid gatherings
 many psychomancers demonstrate their considerable skill in ventriloquism and 
 table rapping. Other forms of prophesying with the dead include anthropomancy
 (the examination of freshly procured human entrails), necromancy (the classic 
 black magic), osteomancy (examining bones), and spatulamancy (the observation
 of the skin, bones, and excrement).

Sarcophagus:	A body repository. Early sarcophagi were made of limestone, 
 a flesh-eating stone which when carved in the shape of a coffin quickly 
 disposed of the corpse, so that the monument could then be used for another 
 family member.  Modern sarcophagi are made of granite or another fasting 
 stone.  Modern embalming techniques have thus forced the old variety of 
 sarcophagus to diet.

Sepulchre:     When a truly grand term for grave is needed, church fathers 
 and horror writers alike turn to sepulchre.  The Latin sepulcrum meant 
 only "a burial place".  Grandiosity was added to the meaning later.

Suttee:	     A quaint tradition of self-sacrifice at the death of a spouse 
 (read "husband") formerly found in India.  Though suttee is illegal today, 
 widows often volunteer at the prodding of noncombatant relatives eager to 
 make a good impression on their neighbors.

Taphophile:	One who loves cemeteries and funerals. NOT necrophilia, but 
 the proper name for the condition exhibited by Harold in "Harold and  Maude."
 Taphophiles show an interest in the trappings of death:  necrophiles want 
 your body, cold.  See also placophobia.

Tomb:	     The Greeks called the swollen ground or mound which marked 
 gravesites a tumulus.  Tombs take many forms (aside from the traditional 
 grass-covered lump of earth which has vanished in this age of powered lawn 
 mowers) and the word is now synonymous with grave.

Vault:	     Even the dead need a roof over their head, to protect them from
 rain, mud, maggots, and moss from the world above. Cemetery vaults are under-
 ground tombs. The word comes from the Latin uoluere, which suggests a turning
 or the curved roof of the structur.  This does NOT refer to the dead spinning
 in their graves.

Vivisepulture:    Burial alive. A slower, colder suttee. By implication,
 an enforced fast unto death. The act of taking it with you where "it" 
 includes still-living relatives, servants, pets, and close friends.

Wake:	  The Irish practice of watching over the body by candlelight on
 the night before the funeral and the often wild feasting which follows.  
 This  may have developed simply because mistakes sometimes happened (see 
 the folk-song "Finnegan's Wake" on which James Joyce's novel is based).  
 The purpose of the wake, therefore, was to create enough clatter to ensure 
 that the deceased was truly dead, and also to help the mourners forget 
 their grief and resume normal life once they were sure.
 
    Are there other cemetery-related terms that should be on this list?  Do
you have illustrations I can use?  Email The Caretaker at: gazissax@best.com