headstone
Americannoun
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headstones
plural
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
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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:
There is room on the headstone for only three of the seven names.
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2026
A few pens have been left on the headstone, which has been replaced at least once; generations of fans have attempted to obliterate “Hughes.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 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
Not included: “A headstone or any other permanent memorial,” the site adds.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 18, 2025
He would find Liza Hempstock a headstone, with her name upon it.
From "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman
In return, he’d get comforts for his death row cell, including a television, as well as $33,000 to pay off a restitution order and purchase headstones for his parents’ graves, The Times reported.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026
Every year, local people come along and rub beach sand into the marble headstones so the names of those U.S. soldiers can still be read.
From Salon ● Jun. 9, 2026
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
They often have an image of the soldier in uniform engraved on the headstones.
From BBC ● Feb. 5, 2026
Bod tried to look up, to see the grave through which they had entered this strange world, but he could see nothing but headstones.
From "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
