sarcophagus

noun

1. A stone coffin, often with its exterior inscribed, or decorated with sculpture.

   “[T]his (venter impiorum inſaturabilis [the insatiable belly of the wicked]) in foure & tvventie houres conſumes many carkaſſes of Fiſhes and Fovvles, and generally tvvice a day all the fleſh therein interred; ſo true a Sarcophagus is the belly: […]”

   “One meets vvith many other Figures of Meleager in the ancient Baſſo Relievo's, and on the Sides of the Sarcophagi, or Funeral Monuments.”

   “This monument (made to ſtand upon the ground, but novv raiſed much above the eye on a heavy baſe projecting from the vvall) is a ſarcophagus vvith ribbed vvork and mouldings, ſomevvhat antique, placed on a baſement ſupporting pretty large Corinthian columns of alabaſter, vvhich uphold an entablature, and form a ſort of canopy over it.”

   “On the lids of those Tombs; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in torment; the lids open there; they are to be shut at the Day of Judgment, through Eternity.”

2. (broadly, informal)The cement and steel structure that encases the destroyed nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

   “'They move stuff out of the sarcophagus?' / 'I know, crazy people, they're killing themselves from radiation.' […] '[S]o the materials, plutonium, catalysis, are assembled at a site near the sarcophagus?' […] '[W]hat we know is this, they collect the plutonium, etc, from Chernobyl, what they don't have yet – is the know-how. To put the bomb together.'”

3. (broadly, historical)A type of wine cooler (“a piece of equipment used to keep wine chilled”) shaped like a sarcophagus (sense 1).

   “A George VI mahogany sarcophagus wine cooler, with nulled mouldings and brass ring handles, the turned stem on leaf carved and moulded legs and brass castors.”

4. (historical)A kind of limestone used by the Ancient Greeks for coffins, so called because it was thought to consume the flesh of corpses.

   “Near unto Aſſos, a citie in Troas, there is found in the quarries a certaine ſtone called Sarcophagus, vvhich runneth in a direct veine, and is apt to be cloven and ſo cut out of the rocke by flakes: The reaſon of the name is this, becauſe that vvithin the ſpace of fortie daies it is knovvne for certain to conſume the bodies of the dead vvhich are beſtovved therein, skin, fleſh, and bone, all ſave the teeth.”

   “His Entrails are like the Sarcophagus, that devours dead Bodies in a ſmall Space, […]”

verb

1. (transitive)To enclose (a corpse, etc.) in a sarcophagus (noun sense 1).

   “All waiting: the new-coffined dead, / The handful of mere dust that lies / Sarcophagused in stone and lead / Under the weight of centuries: / Knight, cardinal, bishop, abbess mild, / With last week's buried year-old child.”

   “Was it the Mummy of King Cheops—still sarcophagused in the labyrinthine recesses of the star-y-pointing Pyramid, to mock generations of Egyptologists, past, present, and to come—that had all at once found a tongue within his desiccated jaws?”

   “Even the sight of a very great king indeed, sarcophagused under electric light in a hall full of most fortifying pictures, does not hold him [a visitor to the Valley of the Kings, Egypt] too long.”