Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A crypt, especially one used for burial under a church.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Any vault or secret passage under ground.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Arch.) A subterranean room of any kind; esp., one under a church (see crypt), or one used as a chapel or for any sacred purpose.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A cellar or vaulted storage room.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English : under-, under- + croft, crypt (from Middle Dutch crofte, from Medieval Latin crupta, from Latin crypta, crypt; see crypt).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

under +‎ croft

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Examples

  • In the space known as the undercroft, classrooms equipped with low plastic banquet tables and tiny chairs are littered with toys, crayons, and construction paper, as volunteer teachers prepare activities and lessons for their two- to twelve-year-old charges.

    American Grace Robert D. Putnam 2010

  • In the undercroft was a workshop where an old monk was teaching two youngsters how to stretch the skin of a sheep for parchment, how to make ink, and how to bind the sheets into a book.

    The Pillars of the Earth FOLLETT, Ken 1989

  • Many worshippers make their way down to the undercroft, where Coffee Hour and a weekly lecture forum are set to begin.

    American Grace Robert D. Putnam 2010

  • The first floor is only accessible by an external staircase, and contains a hall and a small bedchamber, while the ground-floor undercroft would have been storage and servants' space.

    Early medieval architecture in Britain: examples from the era 2011

  • But alas, now split between the glassed-off fortress of the Eurostar showroom and the far-off extension for the spurned Midland platforms, the undercroft filled with a standard-issue transport shopping mall, and enhanced with a Betjeman-themed pub, St Pancras has been multiplexed.

    March « 2009 « Squares of Wheat 2009

  • But alas, now split between the glassed-off fortress of the Eurostar showroom and the far-off extension for the spurned Midland platforms, the undercroft filled with a standard-issue transport shopping mall, and enhanced with a Betjeman-themed pub, St Pancras has been multiplexed.

    Ruined gothic « Squares of Wheat 2009

  • A young man of about Cuhelyn's years, and by no means unlike him in build and colouring, though thinner in feature and somewhat longer in the reach, had been standing a little apart, watching the bustle all round him, his arms folded and his shoulders leaned against the wall of the undercroft, as though this tumultuous arrival concerned him rather less than the rest of the household.

    His Disposition 2010

  • Maybe the staff control access to the undercroft because it's fairly cramped - you wouldn't want crowds of people trying to shove their way around down there - or maybe for the ubiquitous 'security reasons'.

    Location of the seventh-century church in York Carla 2010

  • They are not prepared to support undercroft parking on a large development.

    Designing out Crime Shades 2009

  • A woman with her jutting belly printing the line from her breasts down along her navel to the undercroft of her belly through a tight pale blue dusty t-shirt looks blankly at us as she waves the green and red flags.

    Calabash–Arrival : Kwame Dawes : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

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