Definition of "bier" []

• A stand on which a corpse or a coffin containing a corpse is placed before burial. (noun)
• A coffin along with its stand: followed the bier to the cemetery. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "'Friend,' whispered he, 'for charity conduct us to some safe place where we may withdraw this bier from the sacrilegious eye of curiosity.'"
• "There may be fifty or sixty of these dents to one inch, for weaving very fine linen; usually there are about twenty, which gives a "bier" -- a counting out of forty warp-threads to each inch."
• "Laid out on the bier was the headless body of Agnès La Grange."