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The term is used interchangeably with casket bearer in the modern day. But since you asked, it is a combination of two words- pall -- which is a cloth -- of blanket size, that has religious significance in many liturgical churches.

A funeral procession of days gone by would include casket bearers followed by a separate group of people carrying the edges of a pall which would be placed over the casket during a formal religious or fraternal ceremony in a church or at a graveside. As funeral processions have simplified over the decades, and the duty of carrying the casket and the pall were combined, the term pallbearer was born. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the term was first combined as early as 1710.

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14y ago

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