MEANING
Clothes in which a dead body is dressed for burial, especially in older usage or Gothic writing.
Use it for
Name garments used to dress a corpse for burial.Adds an unsettling material detail to burial scenes and old tombs.
Words that belong together
- wrap a body in grave-clothes
- old grave-clothes
- grave-clothes in a tomb
On the page
The grave-clothes clung to the bones where the coffin lid had split.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- grave-clothes
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Usage notes
An old, usually plural noun for burial clothing; a shroud is a cloth, while grave-clothes can mean the full garments.
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