churchyard

• church-yard

From Middle English churchyard, chirch-ȝerd, chircheȝerd (also kirk-ȝerd, kirkeyard > English kirkyard), equivalent to church +‎ yard. Compare also Middle English kurk-garth, kyrkgarth, kirrkegærd, from Old Norse kirkjugarðr (“churchyard; graveyard”). Replaced Middle English chirchetoun from Old English ċirictūn (churchtown).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɝt͡ʃ.jɑɹd/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɜːt͡ʃ.jɑːd/
• Hyphenation: church‧yard

• Audio (US):

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churchyard (plural churchyards)

1. A patch of land adjoining a church, often used as a graveyard.
   • 1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:

     They said nothing further, but tramped on in the growing darkness, past farm steadings, into the little village, through the silent churchyard where generations of the Pallisers lay, and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall.

   • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 44:

     Ayot St Lawrence's most famous inhabitant, George Bernard Shaw, moved into the New Rectory in 1906 because, it is said, of a gravestone epitaph in the churchyard. This recorded the death of a woman who lived to be 70 with the comment 'Her time was short'. Shaw thought that a place that considered a life of 70 years short was the right place for him.

• (graveyard): see also Thesaurus:cemetery.
• kirkyard (Scotland)

• churchyard cough