Coffin is the learned doublet of coffer, Fr. coffre, from Lat. cophinus. It was originally used of a basket or case of any kind, and even of a pie-crust—
"Why, thou say'st true; it is a paltry cap;
A custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie."
(Taming of the Shrew, iv. 3.)
Its present meaning is an attempt at avoiding the mention of the inevitable, a natural human weakness which has popularised in America the horrible word casket in this sense. The Greeks, fearing death less than do the moderns, called a coffin plainly σαρκοφάγος, flesh-eater, whence indirectly Fr. cercueil and Ger. Sarg.
The homely mangle, which comes to us from Dutch, is a doublet of the warlike engine called a mangonel—
"You may win the wall in spite both of bow and mangonel."
(Ivanhoe, Ch. 27.)
which is Old French. The source is Greco-Lat. manganum, apparatus, whence Ital. mangano, with both meanings. The verb mangle, to mutilate, is unrelated.
SULLEN—MONEY
Sullen, earlier soleyn, is a popular doublet of solemn, in its secondary meaning of glum or morose. In the early Latin-English dictionaries solemn, soleyn, and sullen are used indifferently to explain such words as acerbus, agelastus, vultuosus. Shakespeare speaks of "customary suits of solemn black" (Hamlet, i. 2), but makes Bolingbroke say—