graveyard

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English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
A graveyard in China

Etymology

From grave +‎ yard. Compare West Frisian begraafplak (“graveyard”), Dutch begraafplaats (“graveyard”), Norwegian gravplass (“graveyard”).

Pronunciation

Noun

graveyard (plural graveyards)

  1. A tract of land in which the dead are buried.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:cemetery
  2. (figuratively, by extension) A final storage place for collections of things that are no longer useful or useable.
    1. (collectible card games) The discard pile, in some trading card games.
      • 2006, John Kaufeld, Jeremy Smith, Trading Card Games For Dummies, →ISBN, page 49:
        Certain cards place other cards here because such cards might have abilities deemed too strong if they sent them to the graveyard instead.
      • 2006, Michael J. Flores, Deckade: 10 Years of Decks, Thoughts, and Theory!, →ISBN, page 235:
        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.
      • 2015, Kinetik Gaming, Magic the Gathering Game Guide (Unofficial), →ISBN:
        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.
    2. (sports) A team where players are sent when they are not useful, or a team where players become useless if sent there.
  3. (attributively) A period very early in the morning in which there is very little activity.
    graveyard shift, graveyard slot, graveyard watch
    • 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 2024-01-17:
      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.
  4. (US, slang) Synonym of suicide (“beverage combining all available flavors at a soda fountain”)

Derived terms

Translations

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