graveyard

[greyv-yahrd]

noun

1. a burial ground, often associated with smaller rural churches, as distinct from a larger urban or public cemetery.

2. Informal.,  graveyard shift.

3. a place in which obsolete or derelict objects are kept.

   an automobile graveyard.

graveyard

/ ˈɡreɪvˌjɑːd /

noun

1. a place for graves; a burial ground, esp a small one or one in a churchyard

Word History and Origins

Origin of graveyard¹

First recorded in 1765–75; grave ¹ + yard ²

Example Sentences

For years, weight loss was a graveyard for drug development and shunned by large drugmakers.

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“People are sort of whistling past the graveyard of some real risks out there for the economy,” said Dean Smith, chief strategist at FolioBeyond.

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He exhumed corpses from graveyards in Wisconsin in the 1950s and admitted to killing at least two women whose bodies he then mutilated.

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The graveyard shift will become the domain of retail investors and specialized firms.

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"I don't want to be cremated, I want to be buried like this and have my little bones taken out," she says as her daughter runs around the graveyard and her father-in-law sips a beer.

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Related Words

• burial ground 
• cemetery