graveyard
Americannoun
-
graveyards
plural
-
a burial ground, often associated with smaller rural churches, as distinct from a larger urban or public cemetery.
-
Informal. graveyard shift.
-
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:
A graveyard caretaker wonders, “Why did they have to go and dig up Jason? Some people have a strange idea of entertainment.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 19, 2026
But that kind of optimism can quickly start to sound more like whistling past the graveyard.
From Slate ● Oct. 8, 2026
For years, Khalwinder Singh Bhengura lived an unassuming life in Arlington, Texas, where the 69-year-old Indian immigrant works a graveyard shift preparing passenger meals for an airline catering company.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 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
I’ve never noticed any Swanns in the graveyard before.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
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
The subtropical southern Japanese region boasts some of the world's most biodiverse hubs of normally multicoloured coral, but a 2024 marine heatwave created "graveyards" of ghostly pale or sickly brown organisms.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
The silent ground of our national graveyards is sacred space.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
Wall Street’s graveyards are filled with analysts who have insisted that they would.
From MarketWatch ● May 6, 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
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
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.
