An undertaker is a person whose job is to arrange funerals — to collect and prepare the body, supply the coffin, handle the paperwork, and manage the ceremony for the family. The word is standard British English and still widely used and understood, though the trade itself prefers 'funeral director', which sounds more professional and less blunt; in American English 'mortician' and 'funeral director' are the usual terms. All three name roughly the same work. 'Undertaker's' also names the business or the shop: 'we went to the undertaker's on Monday.' The word has a slightly heavy, old-fashioned feeling in English — undertakers turn up in ghost stories and jokes about gloomy people, and 'he has the manner of an undertaker' means someone solemn and dressed in black. There is an old general sense, now mostly dead, of an undertaker as anyone who undertakes a task or a business venture; you meet it only in old books and legal documents. Because death is a delicate subject, choose your word for your listener: with a grieving family, 'funeral director' is the kinder, more respectful choice.