headstone
Americannoun
noun
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a memorial stone at the head of a grave
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architect another name for keystone
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of headstone
Explanation
A headstone is a grave marker, usually inscribed with the dead person's name. You might visit your grandfather's grave each year, leaving flowers beside his headstone. Another name for a headstone is a tombstone or a gravestone. True to its name, a headstone is often made out of a large piece of stone, frequently slate, granite, or marble. The meaning of headstone was originally "cornerstone," or the stone at the corner of the base of a building, but by the 1700s it came to mean "stone at the head of a grave."
Vocabulary lists containing headstone
Ghost Boys
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The Young Man and the Sea
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In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse
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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:
Second, a granite headstone, measuring six feet by three feet, will be erected.
From Salon ● Jun. 1, 2026
Other notable artifacts connected to St. Eustatius are a headstone from its Jewish cemetery, commemorating a merchant’s wife, and a Hanukkah lamp from Amsterdam that was eventually carried to St. Thomas by Jewish exiles.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 6, 2026
Last year, Ms Dorrian's siblings added her name to their mother's headstone to commemorate the 19th anniversary of her disappearance.
From BBC ● Dec. 8, 2025
Not included: “A headstone or any other permanent memorial,” the site adds.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 18, 2025
Lavender sprayed from two big urns on either side of Aunt Florentine’s headstone.
From Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles
The “expat graveyard” is filled with headstones of people who boldly declared, “We love it here. We’re never leaving.”
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 24, 2026
Beneath moss-covered cinder blocks, dilapidated stone markers, and a handful of headstones, more than 200 children who died in state custody between the 1870s and 1930s are buried.
From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2026
An artist, she’s been drawing picture after picture of dogs since then, or images of headstones that say, “Jan. 8 RIP Jon Snow I love you,” and collecting small plastic husky figurines.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2025
A fatal accident inquiry into his death heard that up to 900 headstones at Craigton were deemed unsafe in the days after the tragedy.
From BBC ● Nov. 8, 2024
There were still only a dozen or so headstones; few had been added since her father’s funeral.
From "Ash" by Malinda Lo
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.
