Definition:
(1) A short inscription in prose or verse on a tombstone or monument.
(2) A statement or speech commemorating someone who has died: a funeral oration.
Adjective: epitaphic or epitaphial. See also: Epigram, Epigraph, and Epitaph.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "tomb, funeral"Examples and Observations:
- "Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I."
(John Dryden, epitaph intended for his wife) - "Here lies the body of Jonathan Near,
Whose mouth is stretched from ear to ear;
Tread softly, stranger, o'er this wonder,
For if he yawns, you're gone, by thunder."
(Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, Funny Epitaphs. The Mutual Book Company, 1902) - "Thorpe's
Corpse"
(quoted in Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature by C. C. Bombaugh, 1860) - "That would be a good thing for them to carve on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."
(Dorothy Parker, who also said that "Excuse my dust" and "This is on me" would make suitable epitaphs) - "Under the sod
Under these trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease
He is not here
But only his pod
He has shelled out his peas
And gone to God."
(Epitaph in Old North Cemetery, Nantucket, Massachusetts, quoted in Famous Last Words, by Laura Ward, Sterling Publishing Company, 2004) - "Here lies a great and mighty king
Whose promise none relies on;
He never said a foolish thing
Nor ever did a wise one."
(John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, on King Charles II) - "The epitaph flourished in the 17th century when writers struggled over the cultural function of the dead. . . . From the mid 18th to the early 19th century, the most important poetic epitaphs seek new ways of validating the importance of the dead."
(Joshua Scodel, The English Poetic Epitaph. Cornell Univ. Press, 1991) - "The principle intention of epitaphs is to perpetuate the examples of virtue, that the tomb of a good man may supply the want of his presence, and veneration for his memory produce the same effect as the observation of his life."
(Samuel Johnson, "An Essay on Epitaphs," 1740) - "The body of
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Printer,
Like the cover of an old Book,
Its contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering and Gilding
Lies here, Food for Worms;
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will (as he believed) appear once more
In a new and more beautiful edition
Corrected and amended, by
The Author."
(Benjamin Franklin on himself, composed many years before his death)
