A coffin (from the Old French cofin) is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation.The word took two different paths, Cofin in Old French originally meaning basket, became Coffin in English and became Couffin in modern French which nowadays means a cradle.[note 1]Speakers of North American English may make a distinction between coffin and casket. A coffin is generally understood to denote a funerary box having six sides, while a casket generally denotes a four-sided (almost always rectangular) box.