A bottle containing tears (cf. Ps. lvi. 8 ‘put my tears into thy bottle’); also transf.; spec. LACHRYMATORY B. 1, applied to small bottles or phials, such as are found in ancient tombs, supposed, with doubtful correctness, to have contained tears shed for the deceased.
1658. [see LACHRYMATORY B. 1].
1662. J. Bargrave, Pope Alex. VII. (1867), 122. Called lachrymatorij, or tear-bottles, because the friends and relations of the defunct were in ancient time accustomed at the funeral to carry each of them a lachrymatorio in his hand, to save his tears that he shed for his deceased friend, and then leave those bottles behind them with the immuralld corps.
1868. Julia Ward Howe, From the Oak to the Olive, 83. A number of objects, taken, he averred, from the two columbaria. These were mostly vases, tear-bottles, and engraved gems.
1884. ‘H. Collingwood,’ Under Meteor Flag, 259. Stow away the tear-bottles, coil down all tender feeling out of sight.
attrib. 1904. Budge, 3rd & 4th Egypt. Rooms Brit. Mus., 35. Glass vessels … of the well-known lacrimarium, or ‘tear-bottle’ type, and belonging to the Roman period.
