the.com/viewing
A gathering before burial where mourners come to see the deceased and say goodbye.
means A scheduled gathering where mourners file past an open casket to look at the embalmed body of the deceased before burial.
from Straightforward Old English stock: 'view' traces back through French 'veue' to Latin 'videre,' simply 'to see.' The word itself is innocent of euphemism — it just means looking. The funeral-parlor sense is a 20th-century American softening, pairing an everyday verb with death to make the unbearable sound like a scheduled activity, something you could put on a calendar between errands.
- etiquette
- touching the body is optional, awkward silence is not
- modern twist
- some now livestream it for distant relatives