• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Graveyard Vs Cemetery: Is There A Difference?

October 30, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

There are so many questions surrounding death: What happens? Where do we go? Burial vs cremation? What’s the greenest way to go? But today we’d like to tackle the perplexing issue of graveyard vs cemetery? Is there a difference?

You may have heard that it all comes down to placement, with graveyards being specific to burial sites attached to churches while cemeteries could be just about anywhere. However, as a Snopes investigation revealed, this distinction between the two categories isn’t true and, actually, the real difference comes down to a third option and our old friend, etymology.

Advertisement

If we consult the Cambridge Dictionary, graveyard is a synonym of cemetery, and cemetery is a synonym of graveyard. The lack of distinction between the two is reflected in their interchangeable use when referring to burial sites, and the experts agree that there’s little to be said for separating their usage.

“There is little or no difference between a graveyard and a cemetery,” Professor David Sloane, who literally wrote the book on Cemeteries In America History, told Snopes. “Either can be places next to a church (although most of those are called churchyards).”

a cemetery in a churchyard

The presence of a church no longer defines what makes a cemetery.

Image credit: John Corry / Shutterstock.com

As for the etymology, graveyard is a more general term to describe burial sites, but there’s a little more specificity to the history of cemeteries. The word comes from “koimeterion,” which is Greek for sleeping place. It came about in 1485 as a synonym for churchyard, but was later used to describe burial sites off of church grounds when there wasn’t room left to keep squeezing everybody into churchyards.

So, it could be argued that there was once a significant difference between churchyard and cemetery, as cemetery was adapted to represent a version of a graveyard that wasn’t so heavily controlled by the church. By contrast, the graveyard in the churchyard was one eventually reserved for more religious individuals as space allocation became an issue.

Advertisement

If you want to bypass the drama altogether, why not just become compost?

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. No ‘magic wand’ to fix Lebanon crisis, new prime minister says
  2. Nissan plans Mexico work stoppages in October due to chip shortage
  3. A Never-Before-Seen Virus Infected A Man After Circulating In Peru’s Jungles
  4. How Benjamin Franklin Charted The Gulf Stream

Source Link: Graveyard Vs Cemetery: Is There A Difference?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • 125,000-Year-Old Neanderthal “Fat Factory” Shows They Gorged On Bone Grease
  • On July 3, Earth Will Reach Its Farthest Point From The Sun – 152 Million Kilometers Away
  • NASA’s Perseverance Rover May Have Recorded Evidence Of Electrified Dust Devils On Mars
  • “Hymn to Babylon”: Missing Mesopotamian Text Dating Back Nearly 3,000 Years Discovered
  • Multiple New Species Of Cute Spotty And Stripy Geckos Discovered In Remote Cambodia
  • ChatGPT May Be Surprisingly Good At Piloting Spacecraft, Taking 2nd Place In Spaceflight Competition
  • Incredible Supernova Finding Shows That “Double-Detonation Mechanism” Happens In Nature
  • Soda Cans, Asthma Inhalers, And… Water Bottles? All Things That Could Explode In Your Car This Summer
  • Video: Is There An Ideal Sleeping Position?
  • If You Look Up At The Right Time Today, You Will See A Giant “X” On The Moon
  • We May Have Our Third Interstellar Visitor And It’s Nothing Like The Previous Two
  • Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild For The First Time
  • How Easy Is It For A Country To Change Its Time Zone?
  • Earth’s First Commercial Space Station Set To Launch In 2026
  • Black Hole Moon: Rogue Planets With Weird Signatures Could Be A Sign Of Advanced Alien Life
  • World’s Largest Ephemeral Lake Set To Turn Iconic Peachy Pink After Extreme Flooding
  • Stunning New JWST Observations Give Further Evidence That Dark Matter Is A Real Substance
  • How Big Is This Spider? Study Explains Why You Might Overestimate Their Size
  • Orcas Sometimes Give Humans Presents Of Food And We Don’t Know Why
  • New Approach For Interstellar Navigation Was Tested On A Spacecraft 9 Billion Kilometers Away
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version