coffin

Coffin comes from Middle English coffyn, borrowed from Old Northern French cofin ("sarcophagus," earlier "basket, coffer"), which traces to Latin cophinus ("basket"), itself a loan from Ancient Greek κόφινος (kóphinos, "a basket").

The word began as a simple term for a woven basket, then broadened in French to mean any coffer or box, and finally narrowed to its grim modern sense of a burial case — replacing the native Old English word þrūh along the way.

Coffin is a doublet of coffer, the two words having split off from the same Latin root cophinus to describe different kinds of containers.