graveyard
nounUS /ˈɡɹeɪvˌjɑɹd/
Etymology From grave + yard. Compare West Frisian begraafplak (“graveyard”), Dutch begraafplaats (“graveyard”), Norwegian gravplass (“graveyard”).
1
A tract of land in which the dead are buried.
2
Broadly, Figuratively A final storage place for collections of things that are no longer useful or useable.
- They're all out on this southbound odyssey / And the train pulls out of Kankakee / Rolls past the houses, farms, and fields / Passing towns that have no name / And freight yards full of old black men / And the graveyards of rusted automobiles.1971, Steve Goodman, “City of New Orleans”, in Steve Goodman:
3
Broadly, Figuratively The discard pile, in some trading card games.
Collectible card games
- Certain cards place other cards here because such cards might have abilities deemed too strong if they sent them to the graveyard instead.2006, John Kaufeld, Jeremy Smith, Trading Card Games For Dummies, →ISBN, page 49:
- If you want to be tricky, though, Rapid Decay can be a flying elbow drop out of nowhere for a surprise win against graveyard manipulation decks; they will always see a Beetles coming, remember.2006, Michael J. Flores, Deckade: 10 Years of Decks, Thoughts, and Theory!, →ISBN, page 235:
1 more example
- When a player does discard or use a card or when a creature also died or a spell gets destroyed, that card gets placed into the player's graveyard.2015, Kinetik Gaming, Magic the Gathering Game Guide (Unofficial), →ISBN:
4
Hobbies, Lifestyle, Sports Broadly, Figuratively A team where players are sent when they are not useful, or a team where players become useless if sent there.
5
A period very early in the morning in which there is very little activity.
- graveyard shift, graveyard slot, graveyard watch
- Her husband, of course, came dressed as Herman Melville.) She's a veteran of these marathons, and warned me about the forthcoming graveyard stretch—when Moby-Dick melds with the altered brain chemistry of sleep deprivation.2024 January 14, Luke Winkie, “A Whale of a Time”, in Slate, New York, N.Y.: The Slate Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 Jan 2024:
- Derived terms
25 terms
aircraft graveyard, automobile graveyard, elephants' graveyard, flies' graveyard, ghost in the graveyard, graveyard chompers, graveyard cough, graveyard market, graveyard-minded, graveyard of empires, Graveyard of Empires, Graveyard of the Atlantic, Graveyard of the Pacific, graveyard orbit, graveyard poet, graveyard poetry, graveyard shift, graveyard slot, graveyard spiral, graveyard stew, graveyard test, graveyard tour, graveyard watch, graveyardy, whistle past the graveyard