Word.ws English Dictionary

zoothapsis

zoothapsis noun: premature burial.

Noun

zoothapsis (uncountable)

  1. (archaic, nonce-word) premature burial
    • In Great Britain, where the custom is to keep the body above ground so long, that evidences of putrid decomposition usually present themselves before interment, but little danger can exist; and consequently, the subject of zoothapsis has scarcely received due attention from the medico-legal writers...1880, College and Clinical Record, volume 1, page 60

Origin of zoothapsis

From Ancient Greek ζωός (zōós, “alive”) and θάπτω (tháptō, “bury”).

Questions about zoothapsis

What does zoothapsis mean?
Zoothapsis means premature burial.
What part of speech is zoothapsis?
Zoothapsis is a noun.

Words near zoothapsis in the dictionary

  1. zoothanasia
  2. zoothanize
  3. zoothanized
  4. zoothanizes
  5. zoothanizing
  6. zoothapsis
  7. zoothecia
  8. zoothecium
  9. zootheism
  10. zootheist
  11. zootheistic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: zoothapsis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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