Definitions

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

  • noun An excavation for the interment of a corpse.
  • noun A place of burial.
  • noun Death or extinction.
  • transitive verb To sculpt or carve; engrave.
  • transitive verb To stamp or impress deeply; fix permanently.
  • adjective Requiring serious thought; momentous.
  • adjective Fraught with danger or harm.
  • adjective Dignified and somber in conduct or character: synonym: serious.
  • adjective Somber or dark in hue.
  • adjective Written with or modified by the mark ( ` ), as the è in Sèvres.
  • adjective Of or referring to a phonetic feature that distinguishes sounds produced at the periphery of the vocal tract, as in labial and velar consonants and back vowels.
  • transitive verb To clean and coat (the bottom of a wooden ship) with pitch.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To clean (a ship's bottom) by burning or scraping off seaweeds, barnacles, etc., and paying it over with pitch.
  • noun A count; a prefect: in Germany and the Low Countries— formerly, a person holding some executive or judicial office: usually in composition with a distinctive term, as landgrave, margrave (*mark-grave), burgrave (*burg-grave), dike-grave, etc.; now merely a title of rank or honor.
  • In music, to render grave, as a note or tone.
  • To dig; delve.
  • . To bury; entomb.
  • To cut or incise, as letters or figures, on stone or other hard substance with an edged or pointed tool; engrave.
  • To carve; sculpture; form or shape by cutting with a tool: as, to grave an image.
  • . To make an impression upon; impress deeply.
  • . Having weight; heavy; ponderous.
  • Solemn; sober; serious: opposed to light or jovial: as, a man of a grave deportment.
  • Plain; not gay or showy: as, grave colors.
  • Important; momentous; weighty; having serious import.
  • In acoustics, deep; low in pitch: opposed to acute.
  • noun The grave accent; also, the sign of the grave accent (`).
  • In music, slow; solemn: noting passages to be so rendered.
  • noun An excavation in the earth, now especially one in which a dead body is or is to be buried: a place for the interment of a corpse; hence, a tomb; a sepulcher.
  • noun Figuratively, any scene or occasion of utter loss, extinction, or disappearance: as, speculation is the grave of many fortunes.
  • noun Sometimes, in the authorized version of the Old Testament, the abode of the dead; Hades.

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

  • noun An excavation in the earth as a place of burial; also, any place of interment; a tomb; a sepulcher. Hence: Death; destruction.
  • noun adipocere.
  • adjective obsolete Of great weight; heavy; ponderous.
  • adjective Of importance; momentous; weighty; influential; sedate; serious; -- said of character, relations, etc.
  • adjective Not light or gay; solemn; sober; plain.
  • adjective Not acute or sharp; low; deep; -- said of sound.
  • adjective Slow and solemn in movement.
  • adjective (Pron.) See the Note under Accent, n., 2.
  • transitive verb (Naut.) To clean, as a vessel's bottom, of barnacles, grass, etc., and pay it over with pitch; -- so called because graves or greaves was formerly used for this purpose.
  • intransitive verb To write or delineate on hard substances, by means of incised lines; to practice engraving.
  • transitive verb To dig. [Obs.] Chaucer.
  • transitive verb To carve or cut, as letters or figures, on some hard substance; to engrave.
  • transitive verb To carve out or give shape to, by cutting with a chisel; to sculpture.
  • transitive verb To impress deeply (on the mind); to fix indelibly.
  • transitive verb obsolete To entomb; to bury.

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

  • noun An excavation in the earth as a place of burial; also, any place of interment; a tomb; a sepulcher.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English græf; see ghrebh- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English graven, from Old English grafan; see ghrebh- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Old French, from Latin gravis; see gwerə- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English graven.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English grave, grafe, from Old English græf ("cave, grave, trench"), from Proto-Germanic *graban, *grabō (“grave, trench, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrābʰ- (“to dig, scratch, scrape”). Cognate with Dutch graf ("a grave"), Low German graf ("a grave"), German Grab ("a grave"), Swedish grav ("a grave"), Icelandic gröf ("a grave"). Cognate to Albanian gropë ("a ditch, hole"). Related to groove.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French grave, from Latin gravis ("heavy, important").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English graven, from Old English grafan ("to dig, dig up, grave, engrave, carve, chisel"), from Proto-Germanic *grabanan (“to dig”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrābʰ- (“to dig, scratch, scrape”). Cognate with Dutch graven ("to dig"), German graben ("to dig"), Swedish gräva ("to dig").

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Examples

  • And when he has tracked and dogged a man to his mother's grave -- _his mother's grave_ -- he can dine, he can laugh, he can go to the theatre!

    The Eternal City Hall Caine 1892

  • Your temperate drinker treads on slippery ground; for as I verily believe that alcohol is one of the most active imps for the destruction of both body and soul, the temperate drinker is too often gradually led on by the fiend, until the habit becomes fixed and inveterate; and he drags a galling chain, each day riveted more strongly, and the poor wretch hourly becomes more callous to shame, until he sinks into the grave -- _the drunkard's grave_.

    Select Temperance Tracts American Tract Society

  • Jack watched him from his place by the window, his expression grave but cautious.

    Earl of Durkness Alix Rickloff 2011

  • Jack watched him from his place by the window, his expression grave but cautious.

    Earl of Durkness Alix Rickloff 2011

  • Jack watched him from his place by the window, his expression grave but cautious.

    Earl of Durkness Alix Rickloff 2011

  • All, that is, with the exception of Spock, who nevertheless rose, hands clasped behind his back, his expression grave but managing nevertheless to convey the fact that, although he did not follow the custom, he agreed with the sentiment.

    The Three-Minute Universe Barbara Paul 1990

  • In Geneva Monday, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton condemned what she described as "grave human rights violations" by the Gadhafi government.

    France: Humanitarian Aid is Priority for Libya Crisis 2011

  • The former director of governance at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa questions why African leaders and the African Union have been “alarmingly silent” about the crisis in Libya following what he describes as the grave human rights abuses perpetrated by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi.

    Former U.N. Official Alarmed Over Africa’s Silence on Libya 2011

  • In Geneva Monday, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton condemned what she described as "grave human rights violations" by the Gadhafi government.

    France: Humanitarian Aid is Priority for Libya Crisis 2011

  • For Lewis's descendents, opening the grave is also an opportunity for closure.

    Mystery Still Surrounds Death of Explorer Meriwether Lewis 2010

Comments

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  • Grave Accent: vis-à-vis

    December 19, 2006

  • In Spanish, a word which is stressed on the penultimate syllable.

    October 25, 2007