bier: [OE] Etymologically, a bier is ‘something used for carrying’. It comes from West Germanic *bērō, a derivative of the same base (*ber-) as produced the verb bear. Its Old English form was bēr, and it was not spelled with an i until the 16th century. The original general sense ‘framework for carrying something’ (which it shares with the etymologically related barrow) died out around 1600, but already by about 1000 the modern specific meaning ‘stand for a coffin’ had developed. => barrow, bear[bier etymology, bier origin, 英语词源]