Necropolis

Quick meaning: Necropolis is a noun meaning (archaeology) An ancient site used for burying the dead, particularly if consisting of elaborate grave monuments.

Meaning

(archaeology) An ancient site used for burying the dead, particularly if consisting of elaborate grave monuments.

More Meanings

1. A city or settlement where most people are dead and/or dying.
2. (chiefly historical, also figuratively) A cemetery; especially a large one in or near a city.

Example Sentences

[I]t [Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris] is an overcrowded, shabby, dusty, and ill-kept cemetery: Kensall Green, though incipient, is far more picturesque; and several American necropoleis beat it hollow.

READ, WILLIAM DAVID, [...] Sol-fa teacher, lecturer, and vocal composer. [...] He is interred in the Glasgow Necropolis, where a handsome monument has been erected to his memory by his friends and pupils.

Queens's Calvary Cemetery was even bigger and busier than Green-Wood. Soon after the Catholic necropolis opened its gates in 1848, one account tallied "fifty burials a day, half of them poor Irish under seven years of age."

Even at Adam Smith's death Glasgow was a city of less than 50,000, less, that is, than the Kirkcaldy of 1951. [...] The pattern of the old city was simple; let us follow it out. [...] Across the ravine is the necropolis, a mountain of gravestones, with a monument of [John] Knox in the centre.

Word Forms

• necropolises
• necropoleis
• necropoles
• necropoli

Synonyms for necropolis

Depending on context, synonyms include necropole, boneyard, camposanto, cemetery, churchyard, crypt.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include cemetery, graveyard, catacomb, cemetary, cyte, necrology.

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