Akademik

(cree.MAYNZ)

n.

The remains of a person who has been cremated.

For a few hundred dollars, Rock & Water Creations of Fillmore will deposit the dearly departed in stumps, fake boulders or rocks — even in a sleeping bear or a leaping dolphin. Each hollow monument has a plaque and a discreet pocket to hold the ashes — or cremains — of a loved one.

— David Kelly, "Keeping Memories Distinct," Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2002

For some of the 68 people whose remains are being buried, the funeral is three years late. Michigan State University, nonetheless, is providing burial in a small cemetery for those who donated their bodies to science...The bodies have been cremated at off-campus crematoriums and the remains have been placed in separate urns he said. "The 'cremains' will be buried together."

— Rob Wilson, The Associated Press, September 13, 1977

Also, a reader passes along the following citation from A

Dictionary of New English 1963-1972:

Any contact with the idea of dying takes place on a totally unrealistic level, buoyed up by semantic fiddling (the loved one passes into everlasting slumber, reposes in a casket, has his cremains hygienically dissolved, rests for all eternity in a memorial park)....

— Alan Colren, "Booking Office: The High Cost of Leaving," Review of "The American Way of Death" by Jessica Mitford, Punch, October 16, 1963