exhume
Americanverb (used with object)
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exhumes,
present (3rd person singular)
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exhumed,
past participle, past
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exhuming
present participle
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to dig (something buried, especially a dead body) out of the earth; disinter.
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to revive or restore after neglect or a period of forgetting; bring to light.
to exhume a literary reputation; to exhume old letters.
verb
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to dig up (something buried, esp a corpse); disinter
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to reveal; disclose; unearth
don't exhume that old argument
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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exhumesimple
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exhumessimple
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have exhumedperfect
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has exhumedperfect
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am exhumingprogressive
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are exhumingprogressive
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is exhumingprogressive
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have been exhumingperfect progressive
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has been exhumingperfect progressive
Past
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exhumedsimple
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had exhumedperfect
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was exhumingprogressive
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were exhumingprogressive
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had been exhumingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of exhume
1400–50; late Middle English < Medieval Latin exhumāre, equivalent to Latin ex- ex- 1 + humāre to inter
Explanation
When you see your mysterious neighbor digging around in his backyard, you may wonder if he’s trying to exhume something. Chances are he’s only digging up potatoes — when you exhume something, it means you’re digging up a corpse. The word exhume traces back to the Latin word exhumare, a combination of ex-, meaning “out of,” and humus, or “ground.” That meaning holds true today: when you exhume something, you dig it up out of the ground. The word almost always applies to the removing of a previously buried corpse, such as law enforcement officials who exhume a body to perform an autopsy or collect evidence related to an investigation.
Vocabulary lists containing exhume
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Beloved
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This Week in Words: July 22 - 29, 2017
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"The safest place to keep the DNA samples is buried separately in the ground, and marked clearly," Zein al-Abdeen told AFP, "or we'll exhume the bodies again later."
From Barron's ● Apr. 27, 2026
Yet commonalities remain: One remedy for vampirism, found on several continents, was to exhume the undead corpse and to drink what was left of its blood.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
She informs Pozner that the only way she’ll believe him is if he agrees to exhume Noah’s body.
From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2024
She is working with Mexico City’s attorney general’s office to exhume bodies of victims of hate crimes and move them to the mausoleum.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2023
Kathleen Enstice, a forensic pathologist who worked for the state, was summoned to exhume the infant's body.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
“The Marriage Portrait” exhumes a similarly fated youngster: Lucrezia, the daughter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 30, 2022
Still, founded on prodigious research, it convincingly impugns key tenets of Bugliosi’s narrative and exhumes a trove of provocative data.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 12, 2019
In “Insurrecto,” she exhumes this episode to conduct a ferocious, censorious and, yes, comic assault on received ideas about history and heroism, art and exploitation, and the ethics of narrative.
From New York Times ● Dec. 26, 2018
In this captivating double portrait, Cumming exhumes the little that is known of the Spanish artist and courtier through the peculiar tale of one of his most passionate devotees.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 4, 2016
It is called "Milkweed" on account of the white sticky fluid which it exhumes from the broken stems.
From Woodcraft or, How a Patrol Leader Made Good by Alan Douglas
“Resurrectionists” – body snatchers – exhumed the recently buried, disproportionately targeting the poor, the institutionalized and those without family protection or the financial means to guard graves.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 21, 2026
"This hearing is what we have been waiting for," Father Flavie Villanueva said after saying a prayer over Joewarski's remains, the 126th body his non-profit group has exhumed as potential evidence.
From Barron's ● Feb. 20, 2026
New England’s last supposed vampire was exhumed in 1892.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
Someone who exhumed a recent interment without that knowledge might well have discovered something difficult to explain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
As soon as the baby was exhumed but before she had an opportunity to formally examine the body, Enstice told an investigator that she believed that the baby had been born alive.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
Shortages in material and equipment — including body bags — meant that exhuming and reburying all the remaining corpses around Khartoum exceeded his agency’s resources, al-Abidin said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 12, 2026
Many found a city with barely functioning services, their homes destroyed and neighbourhoods pockmarked by makeshift cemeteries authorities are now exhuming.
From Barron's ● Jan. 11, 2026
By exhuming the past, he hopes to redeem it and salvage, if only briefly, all he has lost.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 19, 2025
This is in addition to the voluminous effort spanning six nights and 12 hours that reasserts, among many truths, Burns’ dedication to exhuming the rocky facts buried underneath convenient mythmaking.
From Salon ● Nov. 15, 2025
It was on my hands and in my mouth, and my food crackled with it; my eyes were full of it, after days of examining it, exhuming stones like bone.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
