The Fleshy History of Sarcasm and Sarcophagus

Hello,

This week’s post is with thanks to the wonderful QI Elves podcast “No Such Thing as a Fish”. It’s not specifically about words and etymology but sometimes they let slip a mention which sends me scurrying for the dictionaries, as was the case this week. This time it was the notion that sarcasm and sarcophagus have something linguistic in common – the idea of biting. Naturally I had to explore.

First let’s take a look at the word sarcasm. Sarcasm, tagged by Oscar Wilde as “the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence”, is one of my favourite forms of humour. It has been with us as an English word since the 1570s when it was spelled sarcasmus and was defined as a biting taunt or satirical remark. Aha, our first mention of biting.

Sarcasmus was a borrowing from Latin and before that from Greek sarkasmos (sneer, taunt, mockery) so presumably the use of sarcasm even existed in Ancient Greece. Sarkasmos had its roots in the verb sarkazein (to speak bitterly or to sneer). It translates literally as “to strip off the flesh like a dog”. Sarx or sarkos (genitive form) translated as flesh or a piece of meat. This worries me. As a vegetarian do I need to stop using sarcasm?

Back in English the spelling evolved into sarcasm by the early 1600s and has been with us ever since although most people don’t think about dogs ripping meat with their teeth when they make a sarcastic remark nowadays.

But what about the sarcophagus? How do ancient Egyptian coffins get in on the act?

While you may find the whole dog-biting thing a tad grim on sarcasm, wait for the next level grimness of sarcophagus. The word enters English around the year 1600 to describe not the Egyptian coffins themselves but to name the type of stone used in them. It came from the same word in Latin and before that from Greek sarkophagos lithos (limestone used for coffins) where the sarkophagos adjective translates as – flesh-eating. Delightful.

The idea was that the particular type of limestone (which was from a quarry near Assos in Troas in what is now modern day Turkey) helped to quickly decompose bodies. Given all the effort the Egyptians put into preserving their dead, I’m surprised they favoured this stone.

The word itself is compounded from sarx (see above, same root in sarcasm) which meant flesh and phagein, the verb to eat.

For a hundred years the word sarcophagus in English was all about the stone. The idea of it being a stone coffin didn’t arise until 1705. The word was shortened in Latin to sarcus and gives us the word for coffin in French (cercueil), German (Sarg), and zerk the Dutch for tombstone.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. I’m trying out Bluesky, the new social media app. If you’re on there you’ll find me at @wordfoolery.bsky.social . Yes, I’m still on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram too, don’t worry.