HEARSE

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does hearse mean? 

• HEARSE (noun)
  The noun HEARSE has 1 sense:

1. a vehicle for carrying a coffin to a church or a cemetery; formerly drawn by horses but now usually a motor vehicle

  Familiarity information: HEARSE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HEARSE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A vehicle for carrying a coffin to a church or a cemetery; formerly drawn by horses but now usually a motor vehicle

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("hearse" is a kind of...):

automotive vehicle; motor vehicle (a self-propelled wheeled vehicle that does not run on rails)

 Context examples 

Standing hard by the building was a plain hearse.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Then the fox got up behind; and presently the wolf, the bear, the goat, and all the beasts of the wood, came and climbed upon the hearse.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and servants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Ten minutes after the hour the hearse was still standing at the door of the house, and even as our foaming horse came to a halt the coffin, supported by three men, appeared on the threshold.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And six mice built a little hearse to carry her to her grave; and when it was ready they harnessed themselves before it, and Chanticleer drove them.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Then a stone, who saw what had happened, came up and kindly offered to help poor Chanticleer by laying himself across the stream; and this time he got safely to the other side with the hearse, and managed to get Partlet out of it; but the fox and the other mourners, who were sitting behind, were too heavy, and fell back into the water and were all carried away by the stream and drowned.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for friends.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

About five o'clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate—first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet, then Mr. Gatz and the minister and I in the limousine, and, a little later, four or five servants and the postman from West Egg in Gatsby's station wagon, all wet to the skin.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)