crypt
noun/kɹɪpt/
Etymology Learned borrowing from Latin crypta (“vault”), from Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós, “hidden”). Doublet of grotto.
1
Archaic A cave or cavern.
2
An underground vault.
3
Especially: one beneath a church that is used as a burial chamber.
- Near-synonyms: vault, tomb, sepulchre, sepulcher
- She turned and waved a hand to him, she cried a word, but he didn't hear it, it was a lost word. A sable wraith she was in the parkland, fading away into the dolorous crypt of winter.1922, Michael Arlen, “3/2/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:
1 more example
- On its arrival at Bank, incidentally, the City & South London's directors had threatened to demolish the church of St Mary Woolnoth, but after a public outcry the company built its station in the crypt of the church, the bodies being transferred [...]. Therefore St Mary Woolnoth doesn't have a crypt. Or you could say that its crypt is Bank station.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 106:
- Near-synonyms: fovea, fossa
- Sometimes, too much foreign material can get caught in the crypts, leading to frequent infections.2015, Giulia Enders, translated by David Shaw, Gut, Scribe, published 2016, page 25:
- Derived terms
- cryptal, cryptid, cryptitis, cryptlike, crypt of Lieberkühn, hemicrypt, intestinal crypt
- Related terms
- encrypt