The Strange Lyricism of the Herald: Man-Burner

Bostonist has been keeping half an eye on the developing case of Sheila LaBarre, the New Hampshire woman arrested in Revere last week for allegedly murdering a farm worker and burning his body. Ordinarily, these sorts of gruesome stories pique our interest a little bit but we prefer to wait till the trial happens and all the details are revealed. Besides, our area has had such a spate of sensational murders lately - what with the Entwistle case and the recently discovered dismembered body in an Essex Whitman self-storage facility - that Bostonist can scarcely keep up.

Luckily, our new favorite newspaper, the Herald, has done something to make us pay attention to LaBarre: In today's story, the ever-literary tabloid uses what Bostonist thinks is the coolest word ever: "man-burner."

Sure, it could just be the best word available to compress important information into a small space, but somehow, "man-burner" is more than that. To begin with, it reminds us of that 1982 Hall & Oates classic, "Maneater." ("Oh, here she comes; watch out, boy, she'll chew you up!") On top of that, the phrase seems like it could mean so many things: It could be, perhaps, a burner that belongs to a man, and is at once uniquely masculine and slightly absurd, like a man-purse. And certainly, "man-burner" does sound like a variation on "maneater" that you might use to describe a woman who was particularly cruel or insulting to you (or, apparently, who gave you the clap (link is safe for work but offensive)).

Google reveals only one other instance of the term used to describe a real person who burns a dead body (Print Olive, "the notorious man-burner of the plains"), and one instance of a psychopath called "man-burner" in a novel. Dear readers, did Bostonist somehow miss out on "man-burner" growing up, or is the Herald really as innovative and poetic as we think?