epitaph

From Old French epitafe, from Late Latin epitaphium (“eulogy”), from Ancient Greek ἐπιτάφιος (epitáphios, “relating to a funeral”), from ἐπί (epí, “over”) + τάφος (táphos, “tomb”). By surface analysis epi- +‎ -taph.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɛp.ɪˌtɑːf/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɛp.ɪˌtæf/

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epitaph (plural epitaphs)

1. An inscription on a gravestone in memory of the deceased.
   • 1909, Eric Parker, chapter XXIII, in Highways and Byways in Surrey‎:

     The church itself, or at all events the squat and tiny tower, has not altered much since Lamb saw it. But the epitaphs have gone. Search among the ivies and yews of the shady little churchyard will discover a number of flat, weatherworn slabs of stone, but the verses and the signatures have vanished.

   • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 44:

     Ayot St Lawrence's most famous inhabitant, George Bernard Shaw, moved into the New Rectory in 1906 because, it is said, of a gravestone epitaph in the churchyard. This recorded the death of a woman who lived to be 70 with the comment 'Her time was short'. Shaw thought that a place that considered a life of 70 years short was the right place for him.

2. A poem or other short text written in memory of a deceased person.
   • 1621, Democritus Junior , “Honest Objects of Love”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, , Oxford, Oxfordshire: John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:

     Nam vinci in amore turpissimum putant, not only living, but when their friends are dead, with tombs and monuments, nenias, epitaphs, elegies, inscriptions, pyramids, obelisks, statues, images, pictures, histories, poems, annals, feasts, anniversaries, many ages after (as Plato's scholars did) they will parentare still, omit no good office that may tend to the preservation of their names, honours, and eternal memory.

epitaph (third-person singular simple present epitaphs, present participle epitaphing, simple past and past participle epitaphed)

1. (intransitive) To write or speak after the manner of an epitaph.
   • 1606, Joseph Hall, Heaven upon Earth:

     The Commons in their speeches epitaph upon him "He lived as a wolf and died as a dog."

2. (transitive) To commemorate by an epitaph.
   • 1592, Gabriel Harvey, Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets:

     Let me rather be epitaphed the inventor of the English Hexameter.

• elegy (“funeral song”)
• eulogy (“oration about the dead, often at funeral”)
• obituary (“published writing on the dead”)
• epigraph (“quote on a tombstone”)
• hic jacet