burying ground
- noun
- /ˈbɛriɪŋ ɡraʊnd/
- Archaic
- The local burying ground is known for its historic graves and beautiful trees.
- an old burying ground
Examples
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After the service, the family gathered at the burying ground to lay their loved one to rest.
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Facilitate the collection of taxes, strengthen the Church's control of the population, remove the native groups from their sacred shrines and burying grounds, and bring together peoples of diverse ethnic affiliations.
Academic text (1990) -
Over there's an old Comanche burying ground.
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He told his audience not to go into burying grounds looking for tall monuments to important people.
Academic text (2002) -
The soil of a man's heart, Louis, is stonier, like the soil up there, in the old Micmac burying ground.
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But for ancient Egyptians, this 22-mile-long edge of the western desert from Dashur to Giza was one vast burying ground.
Academic text (2006) -
Well, if it came down to it, a tramp round every kirkyard and burying ground in the general vicinity of Broch Tuarach was likely the best he could do in the short term.
Fiction book (1992) -
The autumn when Martha was sixteen and Perry Jr. eighteen, their father sneaked off early one morning and went duck hunting alone in the swamp below the old slave burying ground and was struck dead by a heart attack.
Fiction book (1996) -
When visiting the town, we stopped by the old burying ground to pay our respects.
Synonyms
A place where people are buried, often with headstones
A place where people are buried after they die
A place where people are buried, like a cemetery
An area of land next to a church for burying people
A place where people bury their dead
A large old cemetery for a city with many tombs
A cemetery like a park with gardens and simple graves for quietly remembering people who have died
A large very old burial place near a city with many tombs
How Big
- Archaic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an area of land used for burying the dead' is transparently built from 'bury' (to put into the earth) plus 'ground' (the earth/land), with 'burying' functioning as a place‑modifier. This is a compositional, straightforward noun phrase and has clear parallels in other languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Burying ground comes from a simple picture: a piece of ground kept for burying people who were 'dead', so the phrase came to mean a cemetery or graveyard.