Tomb
//tum// name, noun, verb
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
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 place for the burial of a corpse (especially beneath the ground and marked by a tombstone) wordnet
- 3 A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited. broadly
"As one dead in the bottom of a tomb."
- 4 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."
- 5 Death (literary)
"I'll go to the tomb unrepentant."
Verb
- 1 To bury. transitive
Proper Noun
- 1 A surname transferred from the given name.
Example
More examples"What is learned in the cradle is carried to the tomb."
Etymology
Etymology 1
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.
Etymology 2
Perhaps a variant spelling of Tom, with excrescent -b.
Related phrases
More for "tomb"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.