graveyardy

English

Etymology

From graveyard +‎ -y.

Adjective

graveyardy (comparative more graveyardy, superlative most graveyardy)

1. (informal) Resembling or characteristic of a graveyard.
   • 1892, Amélie Rives, chapter XIX, in Barbara Dering, volume I, London: Chatto & Windus, […], page 175:

     You can’t think how horrid and—and sort of fungusy she makes things. The whole hall smells of her dreadful crape. And she’s worse than papa ’bout Sundays, and has such a graveyardy way of talking.

   • 1920, Arthur Stringer, “Thursday the Second”, in The Prairie Mother, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland & Stewart, page 62:

     But my concert wasn’t much of a success. When you do a thing for the last time, and know it’s to be the last time, it gives you a graveyardy sort of feeling, no matter how you may struggle against it. And the blither the tune the heavier it seemed to make my heart.

   • 1924, “Evergreens”, in Price List: Fall, 1924; Spring, 1925, Fort Worth, Tex.: Baker Bros. Nursery, →OCLC, page five:

     Here we have had to overcome the prejudice in the minds of some that evergreens have a “graveyardy” effect. This prejudice is also due to the fact that only the commoner kinds of arbor-vitaes and cedars have been used.

   • 1924, Hugh Walpole, “Agatha Secretly . . .”, in The Old Ladies, London: Macmillan and Co., […], page 141:

     For one thing, she hated old Mrs. Payne’s room. It smelt to her “graveyardy.” She was sure that the windows were never opened.

   • 1944, Frances Crane, chapter 29, in The Pink Umbrella: A Mystery Novel, London: Hammond, Hammond & Co. Ltd. […], published 1946, pages 184–185:

     Patrick went on, in a graveyardy tone, “You sat here in the dark. Waiting. She came in. You were not waiting for Anna, Mary. So you sat very still. You didn’t want her to see you. She would tell Louis. You didn’t want Louis to know. You were waiting for Ellen. You came here that night to kill Ellen, because it was your only chance to get Louis, and you were at the end of your rope, with all your money sunk in German munitions, and Germany losing the war. Not winning, as you had counted on.”

   • 1973, Karl Menninger, “Of Sycamore Trees and Six No-Trump”, in Lucy Freeman, editor, Sparks, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, →ISBN, page 49:

     But Beethoven was just so naturally optimistic that when he started out to write a sad theme, it sometimes escaped from him and became joyous. Take the “Appassionata.” He no sooner gets one pessimistic phrase out than he decides there is some hope. […] Not one of Beethoven’s symphonies gets very graveyardy except the third and even that is never very convincing. There was never a time when Beethoven gave up hope—in his music.

   • 1988, A[rthur] Bryson Gerrard, “Miss Jones’s”, in Butterflies & Coalsmoke, Oxford: Susan Abrahams, →ISBN, page 55:

     Some of the songs were rather Victorian; I particularly recall a graveyardy nostalgic one called ‘Those Evening Bells’ but recall it chiefly because I learnt to sing ‘seconds’ in it, i.e. contralto; and can sing it still.

   • 2002, Julian Rathbone, A Very English Agent, London: Little, Brown, →ISBN, page 329:

     Sitting there, what he most enjoys is how the prison cold slowly leaks out of his toes, the small of his back, and, eventually, even the very marrow of his bones. It is a dank, deep, miserable graveyardy sort of a chill, the prison cold, and does not shift easily.