Lych

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A roofed gateway or covered porch at the entrance to a church, historically used as a shelter during funeral services
2. A sheltered gateway structure at a church's entry, traditionally providing cover for mourners during burial ceremonies
3. A covered vestibule or porch at the front of a church where funeral processions were historically received

Etymology: "Lych" is simply an alternative spelling of "lich", a word that has survived in English for over a thousand years, mostly as a fossil in place names and compounds. Its ancestor is Old English "līċ", meaning "body", a sense it shared with its close relatives in other Germanic languages. The same root gave modern English the "-ly" ending, which began as a word for "body" or "form" and was attached to nouns and adjectives to mean "having the form of" (so "manly" once meant "having the body of a man"). That is why the word and its suffix are linked in the history of the language. Middle English shows the word already drifting. The form "līke" or "līch" meant "like", "similar", or "in the manner of", and it is from this spelling that the English word "like" descends. In other words, the same ancient root that meant "body" eventually became the everyday word for resemblance, while "lich" itself kept the original sense of a corpse or body in the older compounds where it survives.