Meaning & use
entombment
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Meanings
noununcountableformal
The act of putting a dead body in a tomb.
Grammar: Usually without an article, as a general act: after entombment.
Patterns
- the entombment of someone
The entombment of the pharaoh took many days of ceremony.
Records describe the entombment of the king in a stone vault.
Prayers were said before the entombment.
noununcountableliteraryfigurative
The state of being shut in or buried, as if inside a tomb.
Grammar: Figurative or literal, often about people trapped underground.
The miners feared entombment after the tunnel collapsed.
She felt a kind of entombment in the silent house.
Word forms
| plural | entombments |
|---|
Common combinations
- entombment of the king
- Historians study the entombment of the king.
- ceremony of entombment
- The ceremony of entombment was held at dawn.
- fear of entombment
- His fear of entombment kept him out of caves.
- ritual entombment
- Ritual entombment was common in the ancient kingdom.
Synonyms and how they differ
- burial
- Burial is the ordinary word and may be in the ground, whereas entombment specifically means a tomb or vault.
- interment
- Interment is a formal word for putting a body in the earth or a tomb.
- inhumation
- Inhumation is technical, used by archaeologists for burial in the ground.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: entombment or entrapment?
entombment vs entrapment
Entrapment means being caught or tricked, and has no tomb meaning; entombment involves burial.
Practice
The archaeologists described the ___ of the queen in a sealed stone chamber.
Choose one answer.
Placing a body in a sealed chamber is entombment. Entrance means a way in, and the others do not fit.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “entombment”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.