urn

Etymology

From Middle English urne, from Old French urne, from Latin urna (“vessel”).

noun

1. A vase with a footed base.
   A rustic, digging in the ground by Padua, […] found an urn, or earthen pot, in which there was another urn.
   Mary Fibbs and all her friends start making coughing noises whenever I come near them, and then they all giggle and Mary says Grandfather mixes his cough medicine in the urns on top of the gate posts after dark with his umbrella, and now Jessamy! 1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, page 47
2. A metal vessel for serving tea or coffee.
3. A vessel for the ashes or cremains of a deceased person.
4. (figurative) Any place of burial; the grave.
5. (historical, Roman antiquity) A measure of capacity for liquids, containing about three gallons and a half, wine measure. It was half the amphora, and four times the congius.
6. (botany) A hollow body shaped like an urn, in which the spores of mosses are contained; a spore case; a theca.

verb

1. (transitive) To place in an urn.