[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To place or enclose in a coffin.
1564. Vestry Minutes St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, 5 March. None shall be bury’d within the church, unless the dead corpse be coffined in wood.
1607. Shaks., Cor., II. i. 193. Would’st thou haue laugh’d, had I come Coffin’d home, That weep’st to see me triumph?
1654. Gayton, Pleasant Notes, III. v. 97. Men whom he … had coffin’d up.
1823. Galt, Entail, I. xxxv. 304. He assisted with singular tranquillity in the ceremonial of the coffining.
1861. Sat. Rev., XII. 253/1. Sometimes they coffined their dead in boats or in the trunks of trees.
2. transf. and fig. To enclose as in a coffin; to close up inaccessibly.
1577. B. Googe, Heresbach’s Husb., II. (1586), 90 b. [Quinces] are best kept coffened betwixt two hollowe Tiles, well closed on every side with claie.
1605. B. Jonson, Volpone, I. i. Coffin them alive In some kind clasping prison.
1693. Evelyn, De la Quint. Compl. Gard., Dict. To Coffin themselves, is said of Flowers that shrivel up and dry away in their Buds without flowing or spreading.
1791. D’Israeli, Cur. Lit. (1858), I. 9. The tomb of books, when the possessor will not communicate them, and coffins them up in the cases of his library.
1862. Thackeray, Philip, v. The cards are coffined in their boxes.
† 3. To enclose in a ‘coffin’ of paste. Obs.
1621. B. Jonson, Gipsies Metam., Wks. (1692), 623/1.
| A reverend painted Lady was brought, | |
| And coffin’d in Crust, till now she was hoary. |
1884. Leisure Ho., June, 375/2. Game was often coffined, so was fish, including dolphins and porpoises.
Hence Coffined ppl. a.
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 263 (R.). They keepe the dead in the house … and coffined.
1602. Marston, Antonio’s Rev., III. ii. F 1. Departed soules, That lodge in coffin’d trunkes.
1821. Blackw. Mag., VIII. 615. On meal-ark lid he rests his coffin’d ware.
1854. Stanley, Hist. Mem. Canterb., iii. (1857), 134. The coffined body lay in state at Westminster.
