1. A horizontal stone covering a grave; in early use, the cover of a stone coffin, or the stone coffin itself.
1565. Stapleton, trans. Bede’s Hist. Ch. Eng., 125. The very same tombestone was found to be of a fyt length for the quantitie of the bodie.
1672. Wilkins, Nat. Relig., 28. Suppose he should dig up a large stone of the shape of an ancient tomb-stone.
1696. Phillips (ed. 5), Tomb-stone, a Stone that is laid over a Grave, with an Inscription upon it.
1715–20. Pope, Iliad, XVII. 492. Still as a tombstone, never to be mov’d, On some good man or woman unreprov’d, Lays its eternal weight.
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, i. Sitting down to take his dinner on cold tombstones.
1898. Saga-Bk. of Viking Cl., Jan., 34. Two hog-back or coped tombstones, supposed to be one thousand years old.
b. A stone or monument of any kind placed over the grave of a deceased person to preserve his memory; a gravestone; including a headstone (or the like of wood). (Early quots. may be in sense 1.)
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 26, ¶ 5. When I meet with the Grief or Parents upon a Tomb-stone, my Heart melts with Compassion.
1712. Steele, ibid., No. 518, ¶ 3. There is not a Gentleman in England better read in Tomb-stones than my self, my Studies having laid very much in Church-yards.
1793. Smeaton, Edystone L., § 98. A well shaped Tomb-stone of Granite.
1820. W. Irving, Sketch Bk., I. 84 (Rip Van Winkle). There was a wooden tombstone in the church yard that used to tell all about him.
1843. Bethune, Sc. Fireside Stor., 160. That species of erect tombstone which some one has … designated as spectral.
1870. F. R. Wilson, Ch. Lindisf., 35. The churchyard is crowded with tombstones.
c. fig.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, III. 60. For which thou well deserv’st A coat of tombstone not of steel in which thou serv’st.
1658. (title) Mistris Shawes Tomb-stone,… Beeing a Narrative of Remarkable Passages in the Holy Life and Happy Death of Mrs. Dorothy Shaw, of Brampton.
1755. Smollett, Quix., II. IV. x. (1803), IV. 212. ‘I swear to that condition,’ answered Don Quixote: ‘and, for the greater security, will put a tomb-stone over whatever you shall communicate.’
1819. J. Montgomery, Greenland, v. 186. One frozen plain, The mighty tombstone of the buried main.
1902. Daily Chron., 24 May, 3/1. It puts tombstones to the reputations of many good officers, and buries the blunders of others under cairns of apologetic explanations.
2. slang. a. A pawn-ticket. b. See quot. 1903.
1883. J. Greenwood, Odd People in Odd Pl., 168. The … bag in which the ‘tombstones’ or pawn-tickets were deposited.
c. 1889. Sporting Times (Farmer). The collection for master amounted to 41/2d., and a tombstone for ninepence on a brown Melton overcoat.
1903. Farmer & Henley, Slang Dict., Tombstone, a projecting tooth, a snaggle-tooth.
3. attrib. and Comb.
a. 1845. Hood, Valentine, ii. Just stopped before The tombstone steps that lead us to death’s door.
1905. Daily Chron., 24 April, 4/5. An elderly man was sitting dejectedly on the tombstone-shaded bench.
