tomb
/tum/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.89 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
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.
noun
A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited.
name
A surname transferred from the given name.
Example Sentences
- "As one dead in the bottom of a tomb."
- "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."
- "I'll go to the tomb unrepentant."
Etymology
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”). Displaced native Old English þrūh. The verb is from Middle English tomben.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /tum/
- British English: /tuːm/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
altar tomb
beehive tomb
chamber tomb
empty as the tomb on Easter
the womb to the tomb
womb to tomb
passage tomb
Severn-Cotswold tomb