Words & WritingGreek → English
Epitaph
/ˈɛpɪtɑːf/noun
The words written on a gravestone, or any short text summing up someone's life.
The Greek roots
ἐπί
epí
upon, over
τάφος
táphos
tomb, burial
Literally: “over the tomb”
The story of the word
In Greek the ἐπιτάφιος λόγος was the speech delivered over the war dead at a state funeral, and Pericles gave the one everybody remembers. English took the word in the fourteenth century for the writing cut into the stone instead. The short form outlasted the oration, which is a fair demonstration of what stone does to prose.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cenotaphepigramepigraphtaphonomy
In a sentence
She wrote her own epitaph years in advance and revised it twice.