noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A cave or cavern. archaic
2. 2
   a cellar or vault or underground burial chamber (especially beneath a church) wordnet
3. 3
   An underground vault.
4. 4
   An underground vault.; Especially: one beneath a church that is used as a burial chamber.

   "Near-synonyms: vault, tomb, sepulchre, sepulcher"

5. 5
   A small pit or cavity in the surface of an organ or other structure.

   "Near-synonyms: fovea, fossa"

Show 2 more definitions

6. 6
   Any of the genus Cryptocoryne of aquatic plants of southern and southeastern Asia.
7. 7
   Any of the genus Cryptopus of orchids of Madagascar and Mauritius.

Synonyms

All synonyms

-cryptalveolationalveolusambryantrumapse

Example

More examples

"Tom's body lies in the crypt below."

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin crypta (“vault”), from Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós, “hidden”). Doublet of grotto.

Related phrases

crypt of Lieberkühnintestinal cryptdead peopledead placeold gravetales fromtales of

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.