catacomb -- A Roman underground burial ground where Christians formerly indulged in symbolic cannibalism among the proscribed bodies of friends, relatives, and countrymen. Now used to name any underground burial ground with walking space including the basements of mausoleums and the sewers of Paris.

cemetery -- A burial ground containing the remains of non-Native Americans. The term is derived from the Greek koimeterion, literally a "sleeping place" or "dormitory." Just like college housing directors, cemetery operators seek to cram as many bodies into as little space as they can. Cemetery decorations and upkeep, however, are usually much superior to those of dormitories and seldom subjected to damage by the residents.

cenotaph -- Literally "an empty tomb." Cenotaphs are raised when the deceased has had the lack of foresight to die within the sight or the pocketbook of the one raising the monument.

coffin -- When Shakespeare speaks of a coffin-custard, he is not referring to the results of a botched embalming job but of the common pastry-covered pie. The Greek kophinos was a lidded basket which, thanks to the transmutations of usage, became the lidded box used to store the after-effects of our having lived. Printers used to call the frame which holds the type a coffin, perhaps signifying their dread of early censorship laws.

columbarium -- A columbarium was originally a dovecote or a place where the birds came home after a hard day of desecrating sepulchers and statuary. Modern morticians gave the name to a building with hundreds of little niches in the wall for urns holding cremated remains. Glass doors or other barriers prevent pigeons from coming home to roost in these establishments.

contumulation -- The sharing of a grave or a tomb. For some embattled relatives, the state of being closer in death than in life.

corpse -- From the Latin word meaning simply "body." Once it was not considered unfortunate to be considered a "walking corpse" because it could apply to someone who was still alive and in good health. By the middle of the 18th century, all life had fled the word. Note the relationship of the word to terms such as corps (a body of men organized for the slaughter), corpulent (referring to those possessing a large mound of otherwise dead material in the midriff region), corporal (the officer in a military unit most likely to be killed in action), and corporation (a collection of bodies housed in structures not unlike and about as lively as a mausoleum).

crematorium -- A facility for the reduction of nonfunctional human bodies into carbon, steam, and assorted air pollutants. Cremationists are people who advocate the practice. A cremator is the individual who actually loads the body into the furnace and scoops out the residue; it can also refer to the furnace. The obvious term for the end results of the cremation process, cremains, has not gained popular acceptance.

cromlech -- A Welsh dolmen. Literally and paradoxically "a curved flat-rock."

crypt -- An underground vault, usually beneath a church, where believers sometimes like to hide their dead or their prayerful attitudes. These structures became popular after the rediscovery of the Roman catacombs in 1578.

dolmen -- A Breton cromlech. Any Neolithic monument consisting of a large, flat stone supported by two or more rocks (like a table). It used to be believed that such monuments were altars for human sacrifice or cannibal feasts. With the advent of modern day grave-robbing and archaeology, dolmen were discovered inside of burial mounds with the supposed meal underneath the table. Science concluded that they formed a vault and supposed that exposed versions were either incomplete tombs or windblown remains. Cromlechs and dolmen are the same thing, but since French is considered more chíc than Welsh, the latter term is preferred by the scientific community these days.

epitaph -- Originally a funeral oration (in Latin, epitaphium) which, being a speech made by the living, was said "over the tomb." Families soon made a practice of recording the good lines for posterity, avoiding the inscription of the whole oration due to the high price for fine stonecutting. Sometimes it may be wise to write your own epitaphs to avoid mischaracterizations or clichés, though in this case you are at the mercy of your own folly and bad taste.

hearse -- A word which has had many mortuarial meanings. One could, for example, speak of the hearse carrying the hearse-enshrouded hearse in its hearse while mourners murmured hearses at its passage on its way to the hearse. (Translation: The bier carries the funeral pall-enshrouded body in its coffin while mourners murmur obsequies at its passage on its way to the grave.) The word derives from the Old French word for harrow, a device dragged over plowed fields to break up clods. Now it is used to signify the elongated vehicle used to carry clods on their final journey.

inhumist -- Those among us who prefer to bury our dead in the ground instead of burning them, feeding them to wild animals, throwing them in the sea, or eating them. Not to be confused with "inhumane," because the dead don't feel what we are doing to them. For a time, exhumists generated a living wage by following up on the work of inhumists and recycling what they found. In the past, these were called "grave-robbers" or "resurrectionists." Today they are called "archaeologists."

lich -- A quaint old term meaning "body," either living or dead. Lich is a fine Old English term which inspired many hyphenated constructions like: lich-bell (a bell rung before the corpse), lich-gate (the covered entrance to a cemetery where mourners waited for the arrival of the clergyman who was to conduct the graveside service), lich-house (a mortuary), lich-lay (a tax to provide for churchyards), lich-rest (a grave), and lich-stone (a stone upon which a body could be placed to give the pall-bearers a rest). Old English law held that whatever way a lich passed became a lich-way or a public thoroughfare. This undoubtedly was a reason for survivors living at the end of private roads on secluded estates to feel contempt towards the deceased. The practice has been discontinued.

mausoleum -- Named for Mausolus, King of Caria, whose wife, Artemisia, is history's most remarkable example of a surviving relative who did not go cheap on the grave monument! The splendid tomb was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, inspiring many imitators, but fell, after long last, to the ravages of Crusaders seeking stone for a fortress and pillagers working for the British Museum.

megalith -- A "big rock." Megaliths never fail to impress moderns who have been spoiled by the simple life made possible by heavy machinery. Fertile imaginations overlook the deviousness, imagination, and intelligence of our ancestors who raised them by brute force without the aid of the Starship Enterprise's tractor beam. Most famous megaliths are not sepulchral at all, but they appear here because they tend to fascinate cemetery buffs anyways.

monument -- A relic whose chief purpose is to jar those passing to the remembrance of a concluded event or life. The chief form of resistance to this mind control is to ignore it.

mortuary -- A small scale facility for the production of "The Dearly Departed" from the raw material of corpses. Mortuaries also serve as showrooms for coffins and a place of employment for morticians (formerly called undertakers).

mummy -- A relative (not necessarily female or an ancestor) who has been transformed into an elaborate wax (Persian mum) doll. Mummies resemble the living except for the marked lack of water giving buoyancy to the skin.

ossuary -- The most elegant way to say "bone-pit" or "charnel house."

placophobia -- Fear of tombstones. Other notable cemetery dreads include taphephobia (fear of being buried alive) and necrophobia (fear of dead things). See also taphophile.

polyandrium -- An expensive word for a cemetery. The cost of maintaining such a term in the vocabulary has made the continuance of polyandriums prohibitive. Originally a cemetery for the victims of great battles, a notable producer of corpses.

psychomancy -- Inviting the dead to grant advice to the living. Many believe that the dead retain a great interest in mortal concerns and choose to bother them with their questions. When the dead decline to attend these insipid gatherings, many psychomancers liven up the party by demonstrating their considerable skill in ventriloquism and acting. Other forms of prophesying with the dead include anthropomancy (the examination of freshly procured human entrails), necromancy (classic black magic), osteomancy (examining bones), and spatulamancy (the observation of the skin, bones, and excrement).

sarcophagus -- Early sarcophagi were made of limestone, a flesh-eating stone which when carved in the shape of a coffin quickly disposed of the corpse so that the monument could be used for another family member. Modern sarcophagi are made of granite or other fasting stone. Additionally, modern embalming techniques have forced the old variety of sarcophagus to diet.

sepulchre -- When a truly grand term for grave is needed, church fathers and horror writers alike turn to sepulchre. The Latin sepulcrum meant only "a burial place." Grandiosity was added to the meaning later.

suttee -- A quaint tradition of self-sacrifice at the death of a spouse formerly found in India. Though suttee is illegal today, widows often volunteer at the prodding of noncombatant relatives eager to make a good impression on their neighbors.

taphophile -- One who loves cemeteries and funerals. This and not necrophilia is the proper name for the condition exhibited by Harold in Harold and Maude. Taphophiles show an interest in the trappings of death: necrophiles want your body, cold. See also placophobia.

tomb -- The Greeks called the swollen ground or mound which marked gravesites a tumulus. Tombs take many forms (aside from the traditional grass-covered lump of earth which has vanished in this age of powered lawn mowers) and the word is now synonymous with grave.

vault -- Even the dead need a roof over their head, to protect them from a rain of mud, maggots, and moss from the world above. Cemetery vaults are underground tombs. The word comes from the Latin uoluere, which suggests a turning, referring in the case of vaults to the curving roof of the structure, not to the dead spinning in their graves.

vivisepulture -- Burial alive. A slower, colder form of suttee. By implication, an enforced fast unto death. The act of taking it with you where "it" includes still-living relatives, servants, pets, and close friends.

wake -- The Irish practice of watching over the body by candlelight the night before the funeral and the often wild feasting which follows. This may have developed simply because mistakes sometimes happened (cf. the folk-song Finnegan's Wake upon which the James Joyce novel is based). The purpose of the wake, therefore, was to create enough of a clatter to ensure that the deceased was truly dead and to help the mourners forget their grief and resume normal life once they were sure.