English Explanatory Dictionary

tomb

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A small building, or a room within one, for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. It may be partly or wholly in the ground (except for its entrance) in a cemetery, or it may be inside a church proper or in its crypt. Single tombs may be permanently sealed; those for families (or other groups) have doors for access whenever needed.
  2. A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited.
  3. One who keeps secrets.
  4. Death (literary)
verb
  1. To bury.
name
  1. A surname transferred from the given name.

Pronunciation

/tuːm/ /tum/ en-us-tomb.ogg /ʈumb/

Word forms

tomb tombs tombing tombed

Etymology

From Middle English tombe, toumbe, borrowed from Old French tombe, from Latin tumba from Ancient Greek τύμβος (túmbos, “a sepulchral mound, tomb, grave”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *tewh₂- (“to swell”). The verb is from Middle English tomben.

Synonyms

burial chamber sepulchre vault grave

Derived words

altar tomb beehive tomb chamber tomb disentomb empty as the tomb on Easter entomb the womb to the tomb womb to tomb passage tomb Severn-Cotswold tomb silent as the tomb tomb bat tombless tomblike tombstone wedge tomb
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on T Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary