Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A grave or other place of burial.
  • noun A vault or chamber for burial of the dead.
  • noun A monument commemorating the dead.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To bury; inter; intomb.
  • noun An excavation in earth or rock, intended to receive the dead body of a human being; a grave; also, a chamber or vault formed wholly or partly in the earth, with walls and a roof, or wholly above ground, for the reception of the dead, whether plain, or decorated by means of architecture, sculpture, etc.; a mausoleum; a sarcophagus. See also cuts under catacomb, Lycian, and altar-tomb.
  • noun A monument erected to preserve the memory of the dead; any sepulchral structure; a cenotaph.
  • noun Same as altar-cavity.
  • noun Figuratively, the end of earthly life; death.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To place in a tomb; to bury; to inter; to entomb.
  • noun A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited; a grave; a sepulcher.
  • noun A house or vault, formed wholly or partly in the earth, with walls and a roof, for the reception of the dead.
  • noun A monument erected to inclose the body and preserve the name and memory of the dead.
  • noun (Zoöl.) any one of species of Old World bats of the genus Taphozous which inhabit tombs, especially the Egyptian species (Taphozous perforatus).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small building (or "vault") 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.
  • verb transitive To bury.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a place for the burial of a corpse (especially beneath the ground and marked by a tombstone)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French tombe, from Late Latin tumba, from Greek tumbos; see teuə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin tumba from Ancient Greek τύμβος (tumbos, "a sepulchral mound, tomb, grave").

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