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:
Breaking for health tests, Ruci stayed there until October 7, when judicial authorities agreed to exhume his son's body for toxicology tests.
From Barron's ● Oct. 23, 2025
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
Wade’s family members and attorneys won the right to exhume his body Monday, but they did not get to see the exhumation because it took place hours before county officials said it would.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 16, 2023
Shady could get almost nothing to exhume an almost- unknown pile of rocks on the coast.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
“In 1945 our parents went away and left us,” the British narrator begins, and decades later, he exhumes their secrets from the mire of espionage and war.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 13, 2018
She exhumes two fictional outtakes from discarded novels, including one about a linguistics scholar that she wrote more than 20 years ago.
From New York Times ● Oct. 16, 2017
As the low-affect Elliot gradually exhumes his past, says Malek, “You’re forced as an audience member to navigate inside his head, see everything he’s grappled with that becomes that much more telling.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2016
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 like resurrecting the dead; he exhumes them from their graves: There was G——; how distinctly he recalls the name and some incident in his school life, and that is all.
From The Last Harvest by John Burroughs
“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
Visitors have left little shoes, cuddly toys and laminated poems to commemorate those whose remains will be exhumed.
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2025
Like so many cold, weak people, when faced at last by the incontrovertible disaster she exhumed from somewhere a sort of fortitude, strength.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
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.
