Word.ws English Dictionary

churchyard cough

churchyard cough noun: a severe cough. (condition that causes one to cough, tendency to cough).

Noun

churchyard cough (plural churchyard coughs)

  1. (informal) A severe cough. (condition that causes one to cough, tendency to cough)
    • He was roused from his brief rest by a violent fit of coughing, which seemed to shake the whole system. It was one which in England is so simply, yet so emphatically, denominated a churchyard cough. It was hollow, like the echo of the grave.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 186

Forms of churchyard cough

pluralchurchyard coughs

Origin of churchyard cough

Suggesting that the afflicted person will soon pass away and be buried.

Questions about churchyard cough

What does churchyard cough mean?
Churchyard cough means a severe cough. (condition that causes one to cough, tendency to cough).
What part of speech is churchyard cough?
Churchyard cough is a noun.
What is the plural of churchyard cough?
The plural of churchyard cough is churchyard coughs.

Words near churchyard cough in the dictionary

  1. churchwomanship
  2. churchwomen
  3. churchwork
  4. churchy
  5. churchyard
  6. churchyard cough
  7. churchyard coughs
  8. churchyards
  9. Churdar
  10. Churdars
  11. churel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: churchyard cough (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “churchyard cough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/churchyard_cough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.