Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A roofed gateway to a churchyard used originally as a resting place for a bier before burial.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An archaic spelling of lich-gate.
Wiktionary
- n. A churchyard gateway with a roof, under which a corpse was laid during a funeral to await the arrival of the clergyman.
Etymologies
- From lich (“corpse”) + gate. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English lycheyate : lyche, corpse, body (from Old English līc) + gate, yate, gate; see gate. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“A document appears in a plastic sleeve pinned to the wooden stump that once supported a lych-gate.”
“The Tudor Revival style rectory, hall 1950, and adjacent cemetery with lych-gate complete the church complex.”
“It got him toddling again, though, and I guided our expedition through the medieval lych-gate, into the churchyard.”
“The gate was massive, with supporting towers and a sloping roof like that of a lych-gate.”
“‘I myself and Sir Frederick Leighton are the greatest decorative artists of the age’, was among his sayings, and to show that he at any rate knew nothing of discouragement a great lych-gate, bought from some country churchyard, reared its thatched roof, meant to shelter bearers and coffin, above the entrance to his front garden.”
Simon & Schuster: Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume III Autobiographies
“They went through the lych-gate into the churchyard proper and picked their way round the lichen-covered headstones.”
“Fergus opened his mouth, brows arched skyward, then shut it again and turned without a word toward the black opening of the lych-gate, whence Jamie had disappeared.”
“For Gavin's sake, " he said, and turned away toward the lych-gate.”
“Amy walked to church across the park with Mrs. Oddingsell, over the village green through the lych-gate into the churchyard and then into the cool, changeless gloom of the parish church.”
“After the service was over Father Wilson bade farewell to his parishioners at the lych-gate.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lych-gate’.
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Thresholds
we are all just passing through.
(boundaries, portals and liminal spaces/times)cockcrow, interface, thin line, portal, postern, littoral, interstice, port, membrane, skin, crepuscule, dawn and 304 more...
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Romantic Words
Words that inspire poetic romance and idyllic atmosphere in my mind.
chapel, vale, abbey, beck, willow, lych-gate, churchyard, herb, damask, beryl, foxglove
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BotD
Bossuet, exequial, funereal, bereaved, sepulchral, mausoleum, guttural, unearthly, ultratelluric, eldritch, mortuary, ceremonial and 30 more...
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perhapsolutely's Words
polyradiculoneuro..., abulia, abubble, abscission, abaft, zareba, abatis, abigail, abiogenesis, ablate, ablaut, abo and 1705 more...
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Words I had to Look Up. Srsly.
These are words I've encountered reading that I've had to look up on-the-spot.
execrable, ex cathedra, liminal, elegiac, synecdoche, desuetude, disingenuous, parallelopiped, vulpine, probity, amanuensis, mustelid and 67 more...
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Oh-So-Slightly Morbid
sepulcher, macabre, abattoir, funereal, requiem, trocar, tumulus, lych-gate, rosary pea, moribund, sepulchral
Tweets
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