a stand to support a corpse or a coffin prior to burial

The carriage upon which the coffin is placed in the church.

The stand on which a corpse, coffin, or casket is placed.

To see one, indicates disastrous losses and the early dissolution of a dear relative. To see one, strewn with flowers in a church, denotes an unfortunate marriage.

A bier is a flat frame, traditionally wooden but sometimes made of other materials, used to carry a corpse for burial in a funeral procession. In antiquity it was often simply a wooden board on which the dead was placed covered with a shroud. In modern times, however, the corpse is almost never carried on the bier without being first placed in a coffin, though the coffin is sometimes kept open.