grave

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A place in the ground where a dead body is buried, often marked by a stone.

   They put flowers on their mother's grave.

2. 2
   adj

   Very serious and worrying.

   The patient is in a grave condition.

3. 3
   adj

   Serious and solemn in manner.

   He gave us a grave look before sharing the news.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Grave has distinct origins. The adjective meaning “serious” or “weighty,” as in grave accent, comes from Latin gravis, “heavy, serious”; the Old English noun for a burial place is related to Dutch groeve, “furrow or pit,” which also gave English groove.

From Middle English grave, grafe, from Old English græf, grafu (“cave, grave, trench”), from Proto-West Germanic *grab, from Proto-Germanic *grabą, *grabō (“grave, trench, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrebʰ- (“to dig, scratch, scrape”). Cognate with West Frisian grêf (“grave”), Dutch graf (“grave”), Low German Graf (“a grave”), Graff, German Grab (“grave”), Danish, Swedish and Norwegian grav (“grave”), Icelandic gröf (“grave”). Related to groove.

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary