undertaker
/ˈʌndə(ɹ)ˌteɪkə(ɹ)/ noun C1- A funeral director; someone whose business is to manage funerals, burials and cremations.
- A person receiving land in Ireland during the Elizabethan era, so named because they gave an undertaking to abide by several conditions regarding marriage, to be loyal to the crown, and to use English as their spoken language. · In 1588, Edmund Spenser became an undertaker in the first Elizabethan plantation, receiving the forfeited Irish estate of Kilcolman Castle.
- A contractor for the royal revenue in England, one of those who undertook to manage the House of Commons for the king in the Addled Parliament of 1614.
Plural undertakers
From the library
He was dressed in rusty black, with a very broad-brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie—the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker’s mute.
D’Avrigny took the priest’s hand, and without meeting Villefort, who was engaged in his study, they reached Valentine’s room, which on the following night was to be occupied by the undertakers.
During the night the undertakers had executed their melancholy office, and wrapped the corpse in the winding-sheet, which, whatever may be said about the equality of death, is at least a last proof of the luxury so pleasing in life.
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