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An 'urn' is a vase, ordinarily covered and without handles that usually has a narrowed neck above a footed pedestal. 'Knife urns' on pedestals flanking a dining-room sideboard were an English innovation of the late 1760s that went out of fashion as sideboards with deep cupboard drawers were introduced at the end of the following decade.
'Funerary urns' (also called 'cinerary urns') were used by many civilizations. After death, a body would be cremated and the ashes were typically collected in an urn (for example, the Greek ''lekythos'').
Romans placed the urns in a niche in a collective tomb called a "columbarium" (literally, "dovecote": the interior of a dovecote is usually covered in rows of niches to house doves).
The discovery of a Bronze Age urn burial in Norfolk prompted Sir Thomas Browne to deliver a careful description of the antiquties found, and then expand to give a survey of most of the burial and funerary customs, ancient and current, of which his era was aware, in ''Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial'' (1658).
The Ashes, the prize in the biennial Test cricket competition between England and Australia, are contained in a miniature urn.

Urns are a common form of architectural detail and garden ornament. Well-known ornamental urns include the Waterloo Vase.
In mathematics, an urn problem is a thought experiment in probability theory.
A tea urn is a heated metal container traditionally used to brew tea or boil water in large quantities in factories, canteens or churches, i.e. is it not usually found in domestic use. It has a small tap near the base for extracting either tea or hot water.