MONUMENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does monument mean? 

• MONUMENT (noun)
  The noun MONUMENT has 3 senses:

1. a structure erected to commemorate persons or events

2. an important site that is marked and preserved as public property

3. a burial vault (usually for some famous person)

  Familiarity information: MONUMENT used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MONUMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A structure erected to commemorate persons or events

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

memorial; monument

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

construction; structure (a thing constructed; a complex entity constructed of many parts)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "monument"):

brass; memorial tablet; plaque (a memorial made of brass)

cenotaph; empty tomb (a monument built to honor people whose remains are interred elsewhere or whose remains cannot be recovered)

gravestone; headstone; tombstone (a stone that is used to mark a grave)

megalith; megalithic structure (memorial consisting of a very large stone forming part of a prehistoric structure (especially in western Europe))

national monument (memorial consisting of a structure or natural landmark of historic interest; set aside by national government for preservation and public enjoyment)

pantheon (a monument commemorating a nation's dead heroes)

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; Seven Wonders of the World (impressive monuments created in the ancient world that were regarded with awe)

triumphal arch (a monumental archway; usually they are built to commemorate some notable victory)

Instance hyponyms:

Lincoln Memorial (memorial building in Washington containing a large marble statue of Abraham Lincoln)

Great Pyramid; Pyramid; Pyramids of Egypt (a massive monument with a square base and four triangular sides; begun by Cheops around 2700 BC as royal tombs in ancient Egypt)

Statue of Liberty (a large monumental statue symbolizing liberty on Liberty Island in New York Bay)

Washington Monument (a stone obelisk built in Washington in 1884 to honor George Washington; 555 feet tall)

Derivation:

monumental (relating or belonging to or serving as a monument)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An important site that is marked and preserved as public property

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

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

land site; site (the piece of land on which something is located (or is to be located))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "monument"):

market cross (a cross-shaped monument set up in the marketplace of a town where public business is often conducted)

Instance hyponyms:

Stonehenge (an ancient megalithic monument in southern England; probably used for ritual purposes)

Derivation:

monumental (relating or belonging to or serving as a monument)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A burial vault (usually for some famous person)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

monument; repository

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

burial chamber; sepulcher; sepulchre; sepulture (a chamber that is used as a grave)

Derivation:

monumental (relating or belonging to or serving as a monument)

 Context examples 

Through all the centuries and over all those southern waters nameless men have fought in nameless places, their sole monuments a protected coast and an unravaged country-side.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And there was Higginbotham's Cash Store, that monument of his own industry and ability.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The erection of the monument itself could not in the smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs. Tilney's actual decease.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The monument was originally created in 2006 by President George W. Bush and designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010.

(National monument in Hawaii becomes world's largest marine protected area, NOAA)

I parted from him, poor fellow, at the corner of the street, with his great kite at his back, a very monument of human misery.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

"Any ignoramus can hand down his worthless memory by imposing it upon a mountain or a river. I need no such monument."

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected, concerning the great charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said, that his excellency, who had the sole disposal of the emperor’s revenue, might easily provide against that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want of sufficient for you would grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and consequently, decay, and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of your carcass be then so dangerous, when it should become more than half diminished; and immediately upon your death five or six thousand of his majesty’s subjects might, in two or three days, cut your flesh from your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts, to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In every direction upon these moors there were traces of some vanished race which had passed utterly away, and left as its sole record strange monuments of stone, irregular mounds which contained the burned ashes of the dead, and curious earthworks which hinted at prehistoric strife.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Moreover, the UGR team of researchers points out that, although in the Bronze Age a new type of funerary ritual with individual tombs was established, this did not mean the social rupture that we thought until now, since the re‑use of ancient funerary monuments continued for several hundred years.

(The necropolis of El Barranquete in Níjar (Almería), proven to have been used for funerary rituals throughout the Bronze Age, University of Granada)