graveyard
Americannoun
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graveyards
plural
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a burial ground, often associated with smaller rural churches, as distinct from a larger urban or public cemetery.
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Informal. graveyard shift.
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a place in which obsolete or derelict objects are kept.
an automobile graveyard.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of graveyard
Compare meaning
How does graveyard compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A graveyard is an area where the dead are buried. When you walk through a historic graveyard, you'll see many beautiful old headstones and tombs. Other names for a graveyard are "cemetery" and "burial ground." It's slightly more common to use graveyard, a word that dates from about 1683, for the burial site near a church. If you work at a graveyard, you might care for the grave markers and plants. If, on the other hand, you work a graveyard shift, that simply means you work late at night.
Vocabulary lists containing graveyard
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 endeavor had become a graveyard for research: Despite more than a thousand attempts by other researchers to produce a therapeutic vaccine for cancer, almost none had succeeded in a meaningful clinical trial.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026
A struggle also remains for Jefferson-Hemings descendants to gain the right to be buried in the Jefferson graveyard.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026
They were there when the devastating Santa Barbara oil spill blackened beaches, turned the shoreline into a wildlife graveyard, and galvanized grassroots defense of the coast.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 11, 2026
During his Mayo visit, the Canadian prime minister and his wife Diana Fox Carney attended Mass at the parish church and visited a graveyard where some of his relatives are buried.
From BBC ● Jun. 14, 2026
It didn’t take long for word to spread that there was a “haint” in the graveyard.
From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney
Until now, however, scientists have lacked a reliable way to determine how the remains of extinct megafauna and other animals accumulated, survived, and changed inside these submerged graveyards.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 4, 2026
The silent ground of our national graveyards is sacred space.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
He called for future submersible voyages to find more whale graveyards across the world.
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 2026
Wall Street’s graveyards are filled with analysts who have insisted that they would.
From MarketWatch ● May 6, 2026
I do not search Mexican graveyards for ties to unnamable ancestors.
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
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.
