Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A gravestone.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A stone placed over a grave, to preserve the memory of the deceased; a sepulchral monument.
  • noun In heraldry, a bearing representing a sarcophagus or altar-tomb, usually having a large Latin cross on the slab or top.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A stone erected over a grave, to preserve the memory of the deceased.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A headstone marking the person's grave.
  • noun mathematics The symbol "" marking the end of a proof.
  • verb surfing 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.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a stone that is used to mark a grave

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • The System Drive is comprised of two sections, the core OS, which account for about 20 GB of your first hard drive in the system, the rest of the drive contain what they call the tombstone files, which act as file pointer to the actual locations of all your files.

    Anime Nano! 2009

  • We may not know when Hillary's obituary will be printed – but I think it's pretty easy to predict what the epitaph on her tombstone is going to say:

    Clinton reviewing 'options' - but says superdelegates could shift 2008

  • We may not know when her obituary will be wriiten – but I think it's pretty easy to predict what the epitaph on her tombstone is going to say:

    Vilsack says it's over 2008

  • About half the tombstone is covered with a long panegyric on his dead wife by a bereaved husband: at the bottom of the stone is a later inscription which reads, ‘Now he’s gone, too’.

    As I Please 1947

  • Engraved on his tombstone is the legend "First Comes the Word"—his frequently stated core truth, pointing to the primacy of the writer in all narrative forms.

    Hard-Nosed Hollywood Scott Eyman 2011

  • There on the tombstone was the inscription I had wanted.

    Family Storms 2011

  • There on the tombstone was the inscription I had wanted.

    Family Storms 2011

  • Inscribed on the tombstone was the words, "Here lies Dave Petzal, late of Field and Stream, who never would settle, for rounds not so extreme."

    Nothing Works Better than a .338 2008

  • Modest to a fault, all Dorothy could think of as an epitaph for her tombstone was the line, “She was useful.”

    Bright, Beautiful, Faithful and True: Tribute to My Mother Meg 2009

  • Mr. Abrams, of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York, said so-called tombstone provisions requiring tobacco packages to show large images reflecting the long-term health risks associated with cigarette smoking violate First Amendment rights because cigarette makers would only be able to promote their products on the bottom half of each side of a package.

    Tobacco Giants Challenge Law 2009

Comments

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  • Fits in with one of my obsessions.

    May 22, 2007

  • SonofGroucho,

    I enjoyed your slideshow. I also photograph and "collect" funerary statuary.

    February 19, 2008

  • the placard next to a work of art in a museum or gallery that shows the bare details: title, creator, date

    April 7, 2015

  • My source told me it might be jargon specific to the Art Institute of Chicago. :-)

    April 7, 2015

  • A little googling establishes that “tombstone” is conventional slang among art museum curators for a label giving only identifying information. It is actually quite evocative as it makes a distinction that parallels that between a person’s tombstone ID and his or her biography. This excerpt from ARTnews is representative: “Rather than identifying each object with the classic “tombstone” label (artist-date-medium),…”

    April 7, 2015

  • Wikipedia has a 'grammar guy' whith 50,000 'fixes'.

    http://www.vox.com/2015/2/10/8013509/comprise-vs-compose

    April 7, 2015

  • Are we going to have the world's first slow-rolling argument about museum label nomenclature? Wordnik chalks up another one.

    April 8, 2015