ScienceAugust 19, 2026
entombment
en-TOOM-muhnt
Definition
The act or state of being buried, placed in a tomb, or encased as if in a coffin.
Etymology
Derived from the Old French 'entomber,' which combines the prefix 'en-' (in or into) with 'tumba' (tomb), ultimately tracing back to the Greek word 'tumbos' meaning a mound or burial place.
In the news
The article uses the term to describe the original, now-debunked belief that Ötzi had been continuously buried and preserved within deep glacier ice for five millennia.
In 1991, two hikers in the Ötztal Alps found a body sticking out of the melting ice and assumed it was a recent climber, but the corpse turned out to be a 5,300-year-old man with an arrowhead in his shoulder, 61 tattoos, and a 99.7%-pure copper axe whose met
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