Relict

Here are two sandstone stelae tablets of soot covered sandstone. This layer of industrial grime has flaked off of many of the markers and monuments at Cleveland's Erie Street Cemetery. The one on the right is illegible. On top there is a carving of an urn, and a weeping willow. These two are the most common ornaments of the first half of the XIXth century America.

The stone on the left has an urn and, perhaps laurel leaves. The laurel is a symbol of victory, or accomplishment for completing a course. It reads:

In memory of
FANNY,
Relict of the late
Jewel Prime,
who died June 20,
1832
aged 31 years
2 months
& 9 days.

The only word that may be unfamiliar is 'relict'. It is Latin for surviving. Here it means widow. In some legal documents there was the habit of repeating the same concept in different words, and you could read "widow and relict". English has more words than any other language, and is continually assimilating words. Nearly a thousand years ago english legal documents would have the saxon term, the norman french term, and the latin term. This is not redundancy, so much as accuracy, universality and rhetorical flourish.

To-day, relict is not used on grave markers. It still means survivor. In biology, it refers to a species, or local population that is current, when the rest of the kind are extinct. In geology, it is a feature that remains after the others of its kind are gone.