hearse [ME] In English a hearse has always been a part of a funeral, but its origin is agricultural. The word derives from Old French herce, which meant ‘a harrow’ and goes back to Latin hirpex, a name for a kind of large rake. This came from Oscan, an extinct language of southern Italy known only from early inscriptions, where hirpus meant ‘wolf’: people were making a comparison between a wolf’s teeth and the teeth of a rake. The earliest uses of hearse in medieval English were for a triangular frame, shaped like an ancient harrow, used for carrying candles at certain church services, and for a canopy placed over the coffin of a distinguished person while it was in church. The modern meaning, ‘a vehicle for conveying the coffin at a funeral’, appeared in the mid 17th century.