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