crypt

noun \ ˈkript \

Updated on: 21 Apr 2018

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

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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

Vicar Kunle Ayodeji tells Kennedy the parish hopes to clean up its crypt and create a meeting space under the church.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Casket Rediscovered in Former Wine Cellar," 18 Apr. 2018
Seeing the writing on the crypt wall, the smaller two cemeteries in the Richmond, Odd Fellows and Masonic, began soliciting money from their members to buy land in San Mateo County where bodies could be reinterred.

— gary kamiya, San Francisco Chronicle, "How San Francisco evicted thousands of dead people," 13 Apr. 2018
Internment will be in my Mt. St. Benedict Mausoleum crypt, Bloomfield CT.

— hartford courant, courant.com, "Willie Joseph G. Cardin," 10 Apr. 2018
Members of King's family pulled a rope together to ring a bell 39 times at the pool surrounding the Atlanta crypt of King and his wife.

— the washington post, cleveland.com, "Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to Capitol Hill: 'It was my mistake, and I'm sorry.'," 9 Apr. 2018
The new buildings will house 735 new crypts, which are spaces that hold caskets, and 329 niches, which are designed to hold cremated remains.

— anne geggis, Sun-Sentinel.com, "Boca Raton makes room for more final resting places," 5 Apr. 2018
In the evening, the Atlanta events culminate with a bell-ringing and wreath-laying at his crypt to mark the moment when he was gunned down on the balcony of the old Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.

— chicagotribune.com, "America pauses to mark 50 years since MLK's murder: 'Dr. King's work — our work — isn't done'," 4 Apr. 2018
Atlanta will close its commemoration with a wreath-laying at his crypt.

— douglas perry, OregonLive.com, "Martin Luther King Jr.'s peace message remembered on 50th anniversary of his murder," 4 Apr. 2018
In the evening, the Atlanta events culminate with a bell-ringing and wreath-laying at his crypt to mark the moment when he was gunned down on the balcony of the old Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.

— Fox News, "The Latest: Hundreds gather for MLK march in Memphis," 4 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") are apparently the result of both assimilation and analogy.

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First Known Use: 1583

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