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crypt

KRIPT · noun

Ancient GreekLatinEnglish

Origin

Crypt is a learned borrowing from Latin crypta, meaning 'vault,' which itself came from Ancient Greek kruptós, meaning 'hidden.'

Journey

The word carried its sense of a concealed, vaulted space from Greek into Latin and then into English largely intact.

Related words

Crypt is a doublet of grotto — the two words descend from the same root but arrived in English by different paths.

More words

From Ancient Greek

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