tombstone
UK/ˈtuːmstəʊn//ˈtuːmstoʊn/
tombstone noun: a grave marker, a stone slab or similar object marking a person's grave.
Noun
tombstone (plural tombstones)
- A grave marker, a stone slab or similar object marking a person's grave.
- True, there's no harm in crying for one's husband, and the tombstone, though plain, was a solid piece of work, and on summer's days when the widow brought her boys to stand there one felt kindly towards her.1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 2, in Jacob's Room
- Synonyms:
- headstone, gravestone, grave marker
- The symbol "∎" marking the end of a proof.
- Synonyms:
- halmos
- A marker that takes the place of deleted data, allowing for replication of the deletion across servers etc.
- If you attempt to restore a backup that is older than the tombstone lifetime, it may introduce objects that were deleted […]2008, Laura E. Hunter, Robbie Allen, Active Directory Cookbook, page 739
- A crashdump.
- This actually results in a crash dump, which is written to the log and to a tombstone file.2014, Joshua J. Drake, Zach Lanier, Collin Mulliner, Android Hacker's Handbook, page 186
- An unusual morphological feature on an electrocardiogram indicative of acute myocardial infarction, characterized by a massive ST elevation.
- A printed advertisement in a newspaper or magazine, typically having unadorned centered text in black and white, enclosed in a simple box.
- A museum plaque or caption displaying information about a work of art or exhibited object.
- The last bit of information on each tombstone is an accession number—an alphanumeric block that is assigned when an object is added (accessioned) to the museums’ collections.2015, Harvard Art Museum, Writing on the Wall
- A pawnbroker's ticket.
- "[…] Pity we're not both same size, or I'd steal one of your shirts, for I buried the last of mine yesterday, and here's the tombstone," producing a pawnbroker's duplicate.1862, W. H. Watts, My Private Note-Book; or, Recollections of an old reporter, page 123
Verb
tombstone (third-person singular simple present tombstones, present participle tombstoning, simple past and past participle tombstoned)
- To take part in tombstoning: to jump into the sea, etc. from a cliff or other high point so as to enter the water vertically straight.
- For a surfboard to stand upright half-submerged in the water (like a tombstone, above) because the surfer is underwater with his or her legrope pulled tight. Often this indicates a surfer in difficulty, either held down by the power of a wave or unconscious and unable to get to the surface.
- Before the contest even started, Slater went down hard in a warmup session. He took a two-wave hold-down in the semifinals, his board tombstoning eerily for all to see, […]2005, Bruce Jenkins, Surfer magazine, (referring to Kelly Slater) http://surfermag.com/features/events/mav05/
- To replace (an object or data) with a tombstone marker.
- One of the many improvements in Windows 2000 WINS (and NT4 SP4) is the capability to selectively delete or tombstone records.2000, William Boswell, Inside Windows 2000 Server, page 211
Proper noun capitalized: Tombstone
Tombstone
- A city in Cochise County, southeastern Arizona, United States.
tombstone meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and Malayalam
tombstone in Tamil
- கல்லறைக்கல், நடுகல்
tombstone in Marathi
- थडग्याचा दगड, थडगीचा दगड
tombstone in Bengali
- stone on grave
- সমাধিপ্রস্তর śomadhiprostor
tombstone in Malayalam
- headstone, gravestone, stone
- ശ്മശാനക്കല്ല്, സ്മാരകശില, ഓർമ്മക്കല്ല്, മീസാൻകല്ല്, സ്മശാനസ്തംഭം, പ്രേതസ്മാരകം
More languagesFewer languages
- tombstone in Odia
- ସମାଧି ପ୍ରସ୍ତରକୁ
- tombstone in Tagalog
- lapida
- tombstone in Indonesian
- batu nisan
- tombstone in Thai
- ป้ายสุสาน
- tombstone in Vietnamese
- bia mộ, mộ chí
Examples of tombstone in a sentence
- His tombstone lists his various philanthropies.
- A tombstone inside the burial chamber suggested the individual laid to rest underground was "not a commoner".
- A few examples of material objects included in deathlore are: tombstones, roadside memorials, coffins, and cemeteries.
Synonyms of tombstone
Forms of tombstone
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | tombstones |
| alternative form (archaic) | tomb-stone |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | tombstones |
| present participle | tombstoning |
| past participle | tombstoned |
| past | tombstoned |
Origin of tombstone
From tomb + stone.
Words formed from tombstone
Questions about tombstone
- What does tombstone mean?
- Tombstone means a grave marker, a stone slab or similar object marking a person's grave.
- What is tombstone in Tamil?
- Tombstone in Tamil is கல்லறைக்கல், நடுகல். See Tombstone meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is tombstone?
- Tombstone can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce tombstone?
- Tombstone is pronounced /ˈtuːmstəʊn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of tombstone?
- The plural of tombstone is tombstones.
Words near tombstone in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tombstone (page history and authors); Tombstone (page history and authors); tombstone (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tombstone (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); tombstone (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); tombstone (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-tombstone.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tombstone.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tombstone. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.