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churchyard

UK/ˈt͡ʃɜːt͡ʃ.jɑːd/US/ˈt͡ʃɝt͡ʃ.jɑɹd/
nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechmostly written

Other forms: churchyards

A churchyard is the walled ground around a church, usually with graves in it. Yews, leaning stones, and long grass.

The distinction from a cemetery is real, since a churchyard belongs to a church and a cemetery is a separate burial ground, often municipal. Many British churchyards are now closed for burials and full. They are among the best refuges for wildflowers and lichens in the country, precisely because the ground has never been ploughed or sprayed, which makes them accidentally important.

Arne Müseler · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Definitions of churchyard

  1. 1nounchurchyardThe enclosed ground around a church, often containing graves.C1

    “They walked back through the churchyard in the dark.”

Also accepted in games: graveyard

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    chircheyerd

  2. English, today

    churchyard

Middle English chircheyerd (also kirkeyerd > English kirkyard), equivalent to church + yard. Compare also Middle English kurk-garth, kyrkgarth, kirrkegærd, from Old Norse kirkjugarðr (“churchyard; graveyard”). Replaced Middle English chirchetoun from Old English ċirictūn (churchtown).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 6 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

churchyard in the wild

  • Both of these churchyards are closed to new burials.

    Trinity Church Cemetery

  • In Christian countries, a churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church, which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself.

    Churchyard

  • While churchyards can be any patch of land on church grounds, historically, they were often used as graveyards (burial places).

    Churchyard

  • The poem argues that the remembrance can be good and bad, and the narrator finds comfort in pondering the lives of the obscure rustics buried in the churchyard.

    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

  • There are several churchyard and village crosses, which were small market crosses, dating from the 13th to 15th centuries.

    Grade II* listed buildings in West Somerset

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.