Cemeteries

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Areas specifically created for the burial and memorialization of individuals who have died; spaces intended for both the interment of human remains and the honoring of those who have passed on; grounds set apart for the remembrance and resting of deceased persons
2. Locations designated for the burial of deceased individuals and for memorial purposes
3. Sites arranged to hold graves where people who have died are laid to rest and remembered

Etymology: "Cemeteries" is the plural of "cemetery", and the root of the word is a verb meaning to sleep. The Ancient Greek "koimētērion" came from "koimaō", "I put to sleep", so a Greek cemetery was originally a sleeping-place, a euphemism for where the dead lie resting rather than a plain burial ground. Early Christians took the term into Late Latin as "coemeterium", which kept that gentle sense of a place where the faithful sleep until the resurrection. The word reached English by way of Old French and Medieval Latin, arriving in Middle English as "cimiterie". English already had its own words for the same idea, though. Old English used "līctūn", literally "body enclosure", and Middle English had "charnel" for a mass grave or burial ground. Those older terms were eventually displaced by the Latinate word, which had the dignity of a religious vocabulary behind it.

Synonyms: graveyards, burial grounds, memorial parks