crypt

noun \ ˈkript \

|Updated on: 27 Jul 2018

Examples: crypt in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of crypt

1 a : a chamber (such as a vault) wholly or partly underground; especially : a vault under the main floor of a church

b : a chamber in a mausoleum

2 a : an anatomical pit or depression

b : a simple tubular gland

See crypt defined for English-language learners

See crypt defined for kids

Examples of crypt in a Sentence

the old church's crypt is the final resting place for the president and his beloved wife

Recent Examples of crypt from the Web

In 1986, 200 years after his death, a bronze plaque was placed at his crypt honoring his deeds in the American Revolution.

— craig hlavaty, Houston Chronicle, "See how Texas beef (partially) helped win the American Revolutionary War," 2 July 2018
In the Capulet crypt, Romeo stabs himself instead of taking poison.

— jeffrey gantz, BostonGlobe.com, "Boston Ballet elevates Cranko’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’," 16 Mar. 2018
The photo appears to show Snow in the crypts of Winterfell, where his mother Lyanna is buried.

— erica gonzales, Harper's BAZAAR, "14 Game of Thrones Theories That Will Blow Your Mind in Season 7," 23 Aug. 2017
In a ceremony in 1998 attended by Russian president Boris Yeltsin and 50 or so Romanov relatives, the remains were reburied in the family crypt in St. Petersburg.

— simon sebag montefiore, Town & Country, "The Devastating True Story of the Romanov Family's Execution," 5 Oct. 2016
Some of these crypts are sleek 1980s blocks of granite with glass doors.

— christopher muther, BostonGlobe.com, "Argentina’s capital is a seductive pleasure that transcends the tango and Evita," 10 May 2018
The Grahams could easily improve their gloomy mood by investing in some hundred-watt light bulbs, but no: this is horror, and therefore the dinner table must be illuminated as dimly as a crypt.

— anthony lane, The New Yorker, "“Hereditary” Delivers a New Kind of Horror," 7 June 2018
Willie Lincoln's casket was removed from his Washington, D.C. crypt and placed on the Lincoln funeral train for entombment.

— dawn mitchell, Indianapolis Star, "The epic journey of Abraham Lincoln's funeral train," 30 Apr. 2018
The lowest-price accommodations would mean a single crypt that faces the hedge.

— anne geggis, Sun-Sentinel.com, "Boca Raton makes room for more final resting places," 5 Apr. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'crypt.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

Hidden under the main floor of a great church is often a large room, often with a tomb as its centerpiece. Many major European churches were built over the remains of a saint—the Vatican's great St. Peter's Basilica is an example—and instead of having the coffin buried, it was often given its spacious room below ground level. In a large aboveground tomb, or mausoleum, there may be several small chambers for individual coffins, also called crypts; when the comic book Tales from the Crypt made its first appearance in 1950, it was this meaning that the authors were referring to.

Origin and Etymology of crypt

borrowed from Latin crypta, crupta "covered passage, underground room," borrowed from Greek kryptḗ "underground room," noun derivative from feminine of kryptós "hidden, secret," verbal adjective of krýptein "to hide, conceal," of uncertain origin

Note: The verb krýptein is phonetically and semantically close to kalýptein "to cover, conceal," and the two may have influenced each other. Other forms with which krýptein has been compared, such as Old Church Slavic kryjǫ, kryti "to cover, hide, shroud," Lithuanian kráuju, kráuti "to pile up," are too distant phonetically to allow realistic reconstruction of an Indo-European verbal base. The alternation in consonants between kryp- (in krýptein, kryptós), kryb- (in krýbdēn "secretly"), and kryph- (in kryphêi "in secret," -kryphos "hidden") is apparently the result of both assimilation and analogy.

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 1583

in the meaning defined at sense 1a

See Words from the same year