Glossary: some common funeral-related words and what they mean

Do you pin a cortège on your lapel? If you hear there’s a bier, do you hope that means a refreshing pint? This glossary can help clarify some of the lesser-known terms that get bandied about in the world of funerals.

Bier pin

Like lots of words about death, this one is old, from around the 1300s. A bier is a platform or framework for carrying the deceased (either in a casket or not). The base of our hearse has rollers to allow the casket to slide in and out easily. There’s a “bier pin”, almost like a bookend, that fits in at each end to hold the casket safely in place during travel.

Casket versus coffin

You’ll notice that Stu and Mary tend to refer to the “casket” rather than the “coffin”. They both mean broadly the same thing, but coffin is a more American term.

Committal

We use this word to mean the last goodbye we say to the deceased’s body. This could be at the crematorium or the cemetery. At the point where we say goodbye for the last time and the casket moves away from us, we commit the deceased to the earth or to fire. If you have a religious faith, you may commit your loved one into the afterlife; you may commit them back to the earth Papatūānuku, or to whatever is next. The committal is when we take the conscious step to release our loved one’s physical form.

Committal sprigs or petals

Sometimes we gather sprigs of rosemary, greenery, flowers or rose petals, and at the end of the funeral people are invited to come forward and place a sprig or petal on the casket lid. Rosemary is often traditional for people who whakapapa to Europe. The association of rosemary with memorialising the dead goes back as far as the Roman Empire, and there’s a reference to “rosemary for remembrance” in Shakespeare. Using committal sprigs allows each person who has attended the funeral or committal service to have a moment with the deceased, to touch the wood or cloth that holds them, and say goodbye.

Cortège

This word came into English in the 1600s from France, and means a slow-moving procession of mourners following the hearse. Merriam-Webster has a pronunciation guide. These days it’ll usually refer to a line of cars driving from the funeral service to the cemetery or crematorium. When we drive in cortège the hearse goes 10km under the speed limit and we ask the cars following us to put their headlights on (to help us check that everyone’s following as planned).

Interment

This is the word we use to mean burial. Why not just say “burial”? Well, sometimes we do, but “interment” may refer to practices that aren’t quite the same as the burial of a casket in the earth. An interment could be:

• burial of an ashes urn in a plot at the cemetery
• placement of an urn in a memorial wall
• placement of a casket inside a vault (though that’s pretty rare these days).

There are some terms we use to distance ourselves a little from the raw practicality of how we tend to our loved one’s body. It makes it a bit easier to talk things over and make those practical choices if the language we use is a little softer. There’s also a bit of history to do with when Funeral Directing became a profession (instead of something the local carpenter did in his spare time) and started collecting Professional Terms.

Lychgate

You might see one of these at the entry to a churchyard or cemetery. It’s a gate with a pointed roof and historically it marked the point where the funeral procession would stop and rest on the way to the graveside: “lych” is the Middle English word for the deceased. They’ve existed in Britain for more than 1,300 years, since the seven century. They’re mostly decorative now; you’ll notice they’re not really hefty enough to offer much protection from Wellington’s weather.

Mortuary or morgue?

This is a difference between Kiwi English and American English. In Aotearoa “mortuary” is the technical term for a facility that meets certain Health & Safety requirements to carry out specific activities. For example, a mortuary is where embalming would take place. We don’t have a mortuary at Wellington City Funerals (if you do want embalming, it can be done off-site). Instead we have a simple room where we can wash and care for your loved one, and where we have our cold unit.

Pall, or pallbearer

The “pall” is a cloth that would be draped over the casket and comes from ancient Christian practice. The cloth had a symbolic meaning referring to the deceased’s baptism, but probably also served a practical function by covering the casket with something sombre and dignified. From this word we get “pallbearer”, meaning the people who carry the casket, even though it’s not usually covered by a pall any more.

Plot (ashes or casket)

“Plot” refers to an area of ground set aside for a particular use, for example a vegetable plot or, in our case, a burial plot. A burial plot could be for a casket or for an ashes urn.

Most Council-run cemeteries are divided into sections which reflect people’s religious faiths or identities, such as Returned Services or the Children’s sections.

Likewise, most cemeteries will have an area dedicated to the interment (burial) of ashes urns specifically, where you can purchase a plot that can hold one, two or sometimes three urns.

Most casket plots can also contain two or sometimes up to four caskets (depending on the geography of the particular cemetery).

Viewing

Most of the time, we mean this literally: spending time with your loved one after their death, when you can see and touch them. Every now and again there’s a “viewing” with a closed casket, or even with an ashes urn. We use “viewing” in this context as an umbrella term, even if the deceased won’t be directly visible.

Questions

As Funeral Directors, we get asked a lot of questions and sometimes people get embarrassed about the thing that’s on their mind. It’s our business to think about these things, and we’re not going to find those questions creepy or inappropriate. If you have a question and you feel awkward about asking it, feel free to draw us aside for a private chat or give us a call.

And if there’s a word missing from this glossary that you think we ought to add – drop us a line.