tomb meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

tomb

noun

UK /tuːm/ · US /tum/

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”). Displaced native Old English þrūh. The verb is from Middle English tomben.

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.

Broadly A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited.

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]:

One who keeps secrets.

I never told anyone about it. You're the first, except Ivan, of course—Ivan knows everything. He knew about it long before you. But Ivan's a tomb.1912, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Constance Garnett, The Brothers Karamazov, published 1880, Book III, chapter 4:

Death (literary)

I'll go to the tomb unrepentant.

Derived terms: 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, tombal, tomb bat, tombful, tombic, tombless, tomblet, tomblike, tombmate, tombology, tombstone, untomb, wedge tomb

tomb

verb

To bury.