Coffin facts for kids

Undertakers dancing with casket

A coffin

A coffin (also known as a casket) is a box used to keep dead bodies, either for burial or after cremation.

The word comes ultimately from Greek kophinos, a basket. In English, the word was not used in a funeral sense until the 1500s.

Any box used to bury the dead in is a coffin.

The main distinction between a coffin and a casket is the shape. A casket regularly has 6 – 8 sides while coffins have a rectangular shape.

Images for kids

A shop window display of coffins at a Polish funeral director's office
A casket showroom in Billings, Montana depicting split lid coffins
Recreation of President Abraham Lincoln lying in repose in replicated coffin at the National Museum of Funeral History, Houston TX, with a policeman standing guard
The side of an Ancient Egyptian sarcophagus
Plain bespoke stone coffin, circa 7th century
A Karo coffin in Northern Sumatra
The glass-covered coffin of the Haraldskær Woman
Coffin of the ancient Egyptian high status priest Khnum-Nakht, from the Tomb of two Brothers at the Deir Rifeh cemetery
Daniel Mensah (Hello), 2006
Coffins as an aircraft, a hen, a crab, a cocoa pod in Teshie, Ghana
A coffin shop in Macau
A Universal Casket sales kiosk within a U.S. Costco warehouse retail store in California