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
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
The words are carved into a headstone marking the grave of a young man, whose remains were found on a Cornish clifftop more than 40 years ago.
From BBC ● Apr. 29, 2026
Coming up, there’s a large tomb that resembles a pale blue teapot, and I know my mother’s headstone is a few rows behind it.
From "They Both Die at the End" by Adam Silvera
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
Shortly after, he said, he noticed the headstones missing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2025
Embalming, headstones, ornaments, and plastic flowers are not allowed.
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2024
I stopped before a gray wall where high above me the headstones of a church graveyard arose like the tops of buildings.
From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
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.
