Before Issue Can Be Laid to Rest, a Few More Digs

In humbly trying to answer Steve Allen’s simple question (Why is an undertaker called an undertaker?), I have serendipitously discovered that most people have a misconception of the word’s origin.

Allen answered his own question by saying, “He is involved, obviously, with certain undertakings, but so is everybody else on Earth.”

As I said, “an undertaker is one who undertakes to embalm, beautify, dress, lay out, arrange services for, and either bury or cremate the dead. . . .”

That simple definition implies that undertaker in that sense has preempted the word, erasing any other meanings.

Linda Powell Rofer of Mission Viejo says she is annoyed by the fact that the headline (“A Very Grave Undertaking in Etymology”) promised an exploration of the word’s origin, but I gave none. “I can’t help wondering why you or Steve Allen didn’t think of going to the library.”

On the contrary, I think my simple definition made it clear that undertaker in the sense under study is a specific (and now preemptive) use of the word formerly applied to anyone who undertook anything.

In her neighborhood library, Rofer found nothing better than this, from “Wordly Wise,” by James McDonald: “. . . a person who now accepts specific assignments to dispose of bodies, but who, in the past, might have accepted any undertaking.”

Dorothy Gill quotes “Why Do We Say Such Things?” by Bruce Chapman: “. . . the man who was once called a gravedigger is now called an undertaker--since he undertakes this unpleasant task.” (Actually, a gravedigger is a laborer and undertakes only to dig the grave.)

Rofer is right, though, in rejecting the thought that “ undertaker somehow came from taking the body under the ground.”

“No, can’t be. I don’t think the ancient Brits had such Stygian concepts.”

That is exactly the origin, however, that most letters I have received endorse. “I always thought that they were called that,” writes George Lissauer, “because they took a body and put it under the earth.”

Ruth Roe of Glendale says, “I have always assumed that everyone else’s idea of the origin of the word undertaker was the same as mine: An undertaker is the person who takes you under when you die; in other words, the one who buries you.”

Les Sargent of Ventura says, “An undertaker is simply the man who takes you under.” Conrad Thomas of Ventura says, “The word undertaker , the honest name applied to those who take dead people under. . . .”

Paul Thiele says, “Quite obviously, an undertaker is responsible for taking the deceased under the surface of the Earth.” Walter B. Mourant of Los Osos says: “What’s puzzling about the word undertaker ? He’s the man who takes you under.”

Bobby MacDonald of Woodland Hills says, “Since girlhood I have assumed an undertaker was called that because he took bodies under the ground.” MacDonald denies my observation that undertaker , having been replaced by the euphemisms mortician and funeral director , has vanished from the language: “Not from my language, it hasn’t.”

Joseph Collignon of Irvine says: “I had never understood (the word) to relate to the verb to undertake. I had always understood the word to mean to take under, as in putting the body under ground.”

Guy R. Turgeon is on the right track when he notes that in French an undertaker is an entrepreneur de pompes funebres , an undertaker of funeral ceremonies.

I suppose there is no harm in thinking that the word undertaker means literally to take under. What if they’d called themselves entrepreneurs instead of undertakers? Entrepreneur would by now be as unfashionable a word as undertaker .

Meanwhile, Jack B. Kennett of Laguna Hills explains that in advertising “all cremations done singularly,” the Crippen Mortuary means one at a time. I had said, “One wonders what a singular cremation might be like.”

I suspected they meant one at a time (remembering the recent stories about a mortuary that was cremating bodies en masse); I was merely making a point of the misuse of singularly in that sense. Singularly means in a unique or extraordinary way. They meant singly .

Kathy Thomas of Ramona offers yet another in the glossary of euphemisms invented by the mortuary business. When her father died, she recalls, she was billed (in advance) for shipping the “cremains” to Pennsylvania.

“Certainly lacks the poetry of ‘ashes to ashes,’ ” she adds.