http://www.weirdwords.com your source for weird words or phrase origins Sat, 26 Feb 2011 14:38:18 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 http://www.weirdwords.com/2010/03/07/sarcophagus/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sarcophagus http://www.weirdwords.com/2010/03/07/sarcophagus/#comments Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:56:37 +0000 dave http://www.weirdwords.com/?p=194 In Latin, sarcophagus means ‘flesh-eater’.
When the Romans would open up the tombs that would store the dead commoners of Egypt, the bodies were so decayed (because they were not embalmed) that the Romans thought that they were meant to be in that condition.
They thought that the bodies were put in the containers to rot, so they called the container ‘flesh-eater’, or ‘sarcophagus’.

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