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An epitaph is the short piece of writing on the stone over a grave — the words that remain when the person is gone. It may be a name and dates, a line of praise, a Bible verse, or a dry joke the family chose on purpose. The word is a little formal, but people use it in ordinary talk about cemeteries, and they also stretch it: someone may say “that would make a good epitaph” about a sentence that sums a whole life up, even if no stone has been cut yet. Though actually, the old Greek idea was “words over a tomb,” and that is still the home meaning. Do not look for it on a living person’s door.
墓誌銘
組成From Greek epitaphios, “over a tomb”: epi- “over” + taphos “tomb.” It came through Late Latin and Old French.
同家族的字
- cenotaphboth keep Greek taphos, “tomb”
原始詞典資料4 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。
epitaphnoun/ˈɛp.ɪˌtɑːf/
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An inscription on a gravestone in memory of the deceased.
- The church itself, or at all events the squat and tiny tower, has not altered much since Lamb saw it. But the epitaphs have gone. Search among the ivies and yews of the shady little churchyard will discover a number of flat, weatherworn slabs of stone, but the verses and the signatures have vanished.
- Ayot St Lawrence's most famous inhabitant, George Bernard Shaw, moved into the New Rectory in 1906 because, it is said, of a gravestone epitaph in the churchyard. This recorded the death of a woman who lived to be 70 with the comment 'Her time was short'. Shaw thought that a place that considered a life of 70 years short was the right place for him.
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A poem or other short text written in memory of a deceased person.
- Nam vinci in amore turpissimum putant, not only living, but when their friends are dead, with tombs and monuments, nenias, epitaphs, elegies, inscriptions, pyramids, obelisks, statues, images, pictures, histories, poems, annals, feasts, anniversaries, many ages after (as Plato's scholars did) they will parentare still, omit no good office that may tend to the preservation of their names, honours, and eternal memory.
epitaphverb/ˈɛp.ɪˌtɑːf/
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To write or speak after the manner of an epitaph.
- The Commons in their speeches epitaph upon him […] "He lived as a wolf and died as a dog."
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To commemorate by an epitaph.
- Let me rather be epitaphed the inventor of the English Hexameter.
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。