gravestone

US/ˈɡɹeɪvstoʊn/

nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,700 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: gravestones

A gravestone is the marked stone standing where somebody is buried. A name, two dates, and sometimes a line worth reading twice.

Headstone means the same thing and is equally common, and a tombstone is the older word. The inscription is an epitaph. Slate, granite and limestone all weather differently, which is why some eighteenth-century stones are still crisp and some Victorian ones are unreadable. Churchyards have rules about what may be carved, which surprises a great many families.

Definitions of gravestone

1noungravestoneA stone marker placed over a grave.B2
“The gravestone had sunk almost to the grass.”

Also accepted in games: headstone

Where it comes from

Middle English
graveston
English, today
gravestone

From Middle English graveston, gravestone, gravestan, equivalent to grave + stone.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 19 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

gravestone in the wild

A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually made of stone, that is placed over a grave.
Gravestone
A 5th or 6th Century gravestone inscribed with Fili Lovernii Anatemori, has been reused as a lintel over the door.
Llanfaglan
The granite gravestone is located on a 7-foot (2.1 m) high stonework platform surrounded by the back parking lot.
Mary Ellis grave
On his gravestone is a bronze relief of his head made by the sculptor Karl Donndorf in 1893.
Dionys Pruckner
Perry Monument is a historical gravestone located at Fairview Cemetery in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
William F. Perry Monument

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.

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