coffin: [14] Greek kóphinus meant ‘basket’. It passed via Latin cophinus into Old French, where it split into two words. Cofin came to mean ‘box, chest’ as well as ‘basket’, and it was with these senses that it was borrowed into English. The specific application to boxes for burial is not recorded before the early 16th century. The other Old French descendant of Latin cophinus was coffre, which gave English coffer [13]. => coffer[coffin etymology, coffin origin, 英语词源]