Definition of "catacomb" [cat•a•comb]

• An underground cemetery consisting of chambers or tunnels with recesses for graves. Often used in the plural. (noun)
• An underground, often labyrinthine passageway. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The term catacomb was applied to these subterranean cemeteries at a much later period."
• "Catacumbas, whence the term catacomb, a word seemingly of uncertain origin (Northcote and Brownlow, I, 262-63)."
• "In the northeast corner of the tomb was a small votive vessel filled with ocher, next to it more ocher, a stone pestle, and three objects made from the metacarpals of animals; in the northwest corner archaeologists found a bronze knife and a long bronze awl broken in half; in the southwest corner were two vessels covered with stone lids; and in the southeast corner, archaeologists were surprised to find a censer of a type commonly found in later so-called catacomb burials that had been placed upside down."