Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[ClarissaMach]

What is a "coffin warehouse"? I tried to find definitions at web dictionaries, but it didn't help...
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Stormy Weather.

[CP]

Well, unless someone was using the term to mean something else, a coffin warehouse is just a place where new coffins are stored.

The wholesalers buy them from the manufacturers and sell them to the retailers (often funeral parlors). So they are shipped from the warehouse to the wholesalers or the retailers, like any product.

Do you have a longer passage to look at, in case the term was not being used the ordinary way?
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[ClarissaMach]

Thanks, CP.

Here is the entire context:

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. "
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Stormy Weather.

[CP]

Yes, he means it literally. When he has black thoughts, he goes to funerals and visits coffin warehouses and so on.

Oh, I guess I should have mentioned that a warehouse is just a house for wares (goods), a place to store them.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb