Sarcophagi, subjects of coimetrophiliac interest
Sarcophagus, our term for a stone coffin, or "burial place", located above ground and often decorated, has a terrifying origin befitting a macabre subject. The word comes to us from Latin and Greek, having been derived in Greek from sarx, "flesh", and phagein, "to eat".
The Greek word sarkophagos meant "eating flesh", and in the phrase lithos, "stone"; sarkophagos it represented a limestone that was thought to decompose the flesh of corpses placed in it.
Used by itself as a noun, the Greek term came to mean "coffin". The term was carried over into Latin, where sarcophagus was used in the phrase lapis sarcophagus, referring to the same stone as in Greek.
Sarcophagus, used as a noun in Latin meant "coffin of any material". This Latin word was adopted into English, first being recorded in 1601 with reference to the flesh-consuming stone and then in 1705 with reference to a stone coffin.