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A catafalque is not the coffin. It is the raised, often stand that the coffin — or the body — rests on before the funeral, usually for someone important, so people can walk past and pay respect. Think of a president lying in state: that platform under the coffin is the catafalque. The word is formal and rare; most families never need it. An ordinary funeral uses a simpler stand, and nobody calls it this. Though actually, at some state ceremonies the catafalque is even used with no body on it, as a kind of stage for mourning — but that is a special, official use, not everyday English.
靈柩台（不是棺材，是葬禮前把靈柩架高、供人瞻仰的那座台）
組成Borrowed from French catafalque, from Italian catafalco, from Vulgar Latin *catafalicum: Ancient Greek katá, “down,” + Latin fala, “scaffolding, wooden siege tower,” a word from Etruscan. English scaffold has also coloured how people hear it.
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
catafalquenoun/ˈkatəfalk/
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A platform used to display or convey a coffin during a funeral, often ornate.
- Until noon, the hour of the funeral, crowds continued to file by the plain pine coffin on its plain flower-covered catafalque.
- After another brief funeral rite at Tzu Hu, the presidential casket was laid on the catafalque in the central hall of a temporary “mausoleum” and sealed with marble slabs. There, the body of President Chiang will rest pending permanent burial in the mainland after its recovery.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。