Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An ancient grave mound; a barrow.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A sepulchral mound, as the famous Mound of Marathon raised over the bodies of those Athenians who fell in repelling the invading Persians; a barrow; very frequently, a mound covering and inclosing a more or less elaborate structure of masonry.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An artificial hillock, especially one raised over a grave, particularly over the graves of persons buried in ancient times; a barrow.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun archaeology A
mound ofearth , especially one placed over aprehistoric tomb ; abarrow .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (archeology) a heap of earth placed over prehistoric tombs
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In process of time the word tumulus was in great measure looked upon as a tomb; and tumulo signified to bury.
A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) Jacob Bryant 1759
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"In this parish (Church Over,") says Dugdale, "upon the old Roman Way, called Watling Strete, is to be seen a very great tumulus, which is of that magnitude, that it puts travellers beside the usual road," and a
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 381, July 18, 1829 Various
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Not far from his house is an astonishing modern "tumulus," or mound of hewn and squared stones.
Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) William Henry Hurlbert 1861
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But tumuli is the plural of tumulus, and those are those, you know, if you go to Ireland, for example, you see those humps, those mounds, the burial mounds or Indian mounds - usually burial sites - those are tumuli.
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Nash loves this dark tumulus: another burial mound of an extinct industry.
Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009
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Twigs were neatly arranged in a necklace around the black-holed omphalos of each gleaming tumulus.
Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009
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Nash loves this dark tumulus: another burial mound of an extinct industry.
Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009
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Twigs were neatly arranged in a necklace around the black-holed omphalos of each gleaming tumulus.
Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009
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At the end of 4,000 BC a tumulus culture was established in the area connected with the wave of migrations from eastern Asia.
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Greek tumbos, Latin tumulus were cognates of tumere, to swell, to be pregnant.
Archive 2008-05-01 Jan 2008
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It is within an area where Goddio and his team of archaeologists have discovered a sizeable tumulus (a mound raised over graves) – about 60 metres long by 8 metres wide – and sumptuous Greek funerary offerings.
Fruit baskets from fourth century BC found in ruins of Thonis-Heracleion Dalya Alberge 2021
brtom commented on the word tumulus
"And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be ushered ..."
Joyce, Ulysses, 14
January 20, 2007
jaime_d commented on the word tumulus
from Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
July 19, 2009
jaime_d commented on the word tumulus
". . .a fairly lowly position but which had its own distinction, won by Hassan on account of his polymathic study of an almost unknown tumulus (and nobody who did know it could work out its import) from an oppidum civium romanorum which a scholar from Munich, a Judaist in flight from Austria's Anschluss, had found in diggings at Thugga (or, as it's nowadays known, Dougga)." Gilbert Adair translation of Georges Perec's La Disparition
August 11, 2010