grotto

Grotto comes from Italian grotta, which traces back through Vulgar Latin grupta to Classical Latin crypta. In the Philippines, the word also came to describe shrines modeled on the holy cave at Lourdes, France.

The word passed from Latin into Vulgar Latin and then Italian before settling into English as 'grotto,' keeping its core sense of a cave-like hollow throughout. In the Philippines, that sense narrowed toward a specific kind of religious shrine inspired by Lourdes.

Grotto is a doublet of crypt — the two words descend from the same Latin source, crypta, but arrived in English by different paths.