A stone set above a grave, usually with the person’s name and the years they lived, and sometimes a short line of words. It marks the place and tells you who is buried there. Headstone and tombstone are close cousins in meaning; gravestone is the plain compound — grave plus stone — and sounds a little old, a little churchyard. You read a gravestone; you do not usually call a statue in a city a gravestone. Though actually, some graves have a flat stone on the ground and some have an upright one, and people still say gravestone for both.