Crypt

The story of the word

κρυπτή is the feminine of κρυπτός, hidden, pressed into service as a noun for a covered passage or vault. Latin crypta then went two ways in Italian: preserved as cripta for the church chamber, and worn down in speech to grotta, so grotto and crypt are the same word twice over. English used crypt for a cave in the sixteenth century and only later fixed it under the church floor. Cryptography, apocrypha and cryptic come from the same verb, as does cryptocurrency, which hides its keys rather than its dead.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → Latin → English

First recorded

16th century