burial vault
1
7.9
- noun
- /ˈbɜːriəl vɔlt/
:
bóveda funeraria
- To ensure proper protection, they selected a durable burial vault for their final resting place.
- casket and burial vault
Examples
-
Cemeteries often require the use of a burial vault to protect the coffin from the elements.
-
Even in a burial vault, Jordan (whose name recalled the biblical river) invoked "God," at once a conventional expletive and an unconscious acknowledgment of a just overseer (Figure 9).
Academic text (2015) -
On either side of them are two crypts, enough for four burial vaults.
Fiction book (1994) -
Pan rested upon a burial vault at a far end of the yard and watched their carriages arrive.
Fiction book (1990) -
The window, designed by the stained-glass master D. Maitland Armstrong, was installed in 1903 almost directly over the entrance to the Stuyvesant family burial vault under St. Mark's, 131 East 10th Street.
Blog text (27) -
The family chose a beautiful burial vault to honor their loved one during the interment.
Synonyms
235
3.0
A large stone building or underground room where people put a dead person
51
7.6
An underground room beneath a church used to bury people
15
6.9
An underground room for holding the bodies of several people
5
9.9
A small stone room where a dead person is buried
4
6.3
A room under the ground that holds a dead body
2
9.1
A tomb built to hold the body of an important person
A room under a church used for burials or quiet prayer
How Protective
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'burial vault' is transparently built from 'burial' (the act or place of interring the dead) and 'vault' (an underground or enclosed chamber), so the meaning 'an underground chamber for burying a coffin' follows directly from the constituents. This literal noun–noun composition is predictable and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words will very likely understand the MWE.
Etymology
The noun burial vault comes from a simple picture: burial means putting a body in the ground, and a vault is a strong underground room with a curved roof that holds a coffin. That's why the phrase means 'an underground chamber used for burying a coffin' and why vaults were made to keep the coffin safe from water and the moving ground.