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:
This city of 350,000 resembles an oil-industry graveyard.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
But that kind of optimism can quickly start to sound more like whistling past the graveyard.
From Slate ● Oct. 8, 2026
That’s part of the reason why the risk-on sentiment is beginning to spread to cryptocurrencies — an asset class known for its volatility — which has helped bitcoin’s comeback from the graveyard, Hackett said.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026
Sustainable Hatherleigh runs a range of projects to support the community, from leading bug hunts and encouraging wildflowers and biodiversity in the local graveyard to community composting and running a repair café.
From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2026
On March 8 the committee was prepared to submit its report, thereby assuring that the controversy would not go away or get buried in some parliamentary graveyard.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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
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
Add in recent cemetery thefts in Nebraska, North Dakota, New Mexico, Washington: Across the nation, American graveyards are being pilfered.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 14, 2026
She said, “There’s rules for those in graveyards, but not for those as was buried in unhallowed ground. Nobody tells me what to do, or where to go.”
From "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman
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.
