epitaphology
English
Etymology
From epitaph + -ology.
Noun
epitaphology (uncountable)
- The study of epitaphs.
- 1880 October 5, “Marriage: Was the Subject of Talmage’s Sunday Morning Sermon, Taking for His Text the Passage from Genesis, “This is Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh.” […]”, in The Memphis Daily Appeal, volume XXXIX, number 236, Memphis, Tenn., section “Hasty and Reckless Words”, page 3, column 4:
- Flattering epitaphology, though Drydens composed it, and polished Aberdeen granite, though Angelos chiseled it, could never atone for unkindnesses to the living.
- 1987, “Epiphany xi”, in Barry Callaghan, transl., Flowers of Ice, Toronto, Ont.: Exile Editions, translation of original by Imants Ziedonis, →ISBN, page 103:
- At least consider what you’d write in your own will, or on your own stone. It could happen, after all, in 50 year, as your hour draws near, there’ll be a sociological sub-section – epitaphology – the study of your documented life: socio-ethical values decipherable in your tombstone script – and whether you deserve burial in a cemetery, in this enormous bibliographical bastion, or back behind the dam, as soulless pagans were.
- 2006, Literature of the Graveyard (Studies in the Literary Imagination; volume 39, number 1), page 93:
- In the field of epitaphology, Dr. Johnson opens his essay on the subject by adhering to the familiar topos of claiming new territory for critical exploration: […]
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Derived terms
- epitaphologist