Sarcophagus
Added to my Greek vocabulary today when I ran across the word sarkos in a scriptural analysis; it translates as “flesh” (basic vocabulary, really, but I’m still fairly ignorant of Greek).
“Hmm,” I think, “do I know any English words starting with that root?”
“Oh, yes. Sarcophagus.”
“Hmm, sarco – phagus. phagos ... like eating?” (one Greek suffix I do happen to know—oophage, bacteriophage, yada yada…)
”’Flesh-eater’? Whoa, that’s weird.”
I hit Google, which confirmed this. One definition ran thus:
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.
Actually, according to some anonymous writer on Wikipedia, the flesh-eating behavior of limestone was a misapprehension by Herodotus (a different source attributes the notion to Pliny [elder? younger?] as an exaggeration of porus limestone’s promotion of decomposition).
Regardless, this distinction between hungry stone and fasting stone is such a Romantic notion, isn’t it? Poetic, in a grim way…