All 31 Uses of

grave

in

The Scarlet Letter

I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor—who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace—a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known.
Chpt Intr. (definition 1)

grave = serious and solemn

Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave.
Chpt 2 (definition 1)

Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play.
Chpt 2 (definition 1)

gravest = most serious

"A wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely, bowing his head.
Chpt 3 (definition 1)

gravely = in a serious and solemn manner

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their play,—or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins—and spoke gravely one to another.
Chpt 7 (definition 1)

The brilliancy might have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler.
Chpt 7 (definition 1)

grave = serious and solemn

"It is as well to have made this step," said Roger Chillingworth to himself, looking after the minister, with a grave smile.
Chpt 10 (definition 1)

"Thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, but startled at heart; for so confused was his remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past night as visionary.
Chpt 12 (definition 1)

gravely = in a serious and solemn manner

"I profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good breeding made imperative—"I profess, on my conscience and character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words!"
Chpt 20 (definition 1)

grave = serious and solemn

All this time Roger Chillingworth was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient.
Chpt 20 (definition 1) *

Into this festal season of the year—as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centuries—the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.
Chpt 21 (definition 1)

A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain.
Chpt 21 (definition 1)

gravity = seriousness

In that old day the English settler on these rude shores—having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence was strong in him—bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age—on long-tried integrity—on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience—on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gave the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability.
Chpt 22 (definition 1)

grave = serious and solemn

Click For
Best Example Sentences
From Other Sources
Grouped by 2 Meanings

Uses with a very common or rare meaning:

I felt it almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the mould of features and cast of character which had all along been familiar here—ever, as one representative of the race lay down in the grave, another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main street—might still in my little day be seen and recognised in the old town.
Chpt Intr. (definition 2)

grave = burial spot

It impressed me as if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and wearing his immortal wig—which was buried with him, but did not perish in the grave—had met me in the deserted chamber of the Custom-House.
Chpt Intr. (definition 2)

Keeping up the metaphor of the political guillotine, the whole may be considered as the POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR: and the sketch which I am now bringing to a close, if too autobiographical for a modest person to publish in his lifetime, will readily be excused in a gentleman who writes from beyond the grave.
Chpt Intr. (definition 2)

grave = time where buried

In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel.
Chpt 1 (definition 2)

grave = burial spot

And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.
Chpt 5 (definition 2)

I could be well content that my labours, and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf.
Chpt 9 (definition 2)

He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption.
Chpt 10 (definition 2)

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he talked with Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants.
Chpt 10 (definition 2)

I found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance.
Chpt 10 (definition 2)

She now skipped irreverently from one grave to another; until coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy—perhaps of Isaac Johnson himself—she began to dance upon it.
Chpt 10 (definition 2)

The aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children that their old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's holy grave.
Chpt 11 (definition 2)

And all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!
Chpt 11 (definition 2)

He looked like a ghost evoked unseasonably from the grave.
Chpt 12 (definition 2) *

With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave.
Chpt 14 (definition 2)

grave = being buried

So strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings.
Chpt 17 (definition 2)

grave = time of being buried

None knew—nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty—whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued and made capable of a woman's gentle happiness.
Chpt 24 (definition 2)

grave = burial

And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built.
Chpt 24 (definition 2)

grave = burial spot

It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle.
Chpt 24 (definition 2)

Definitions:

(1) (grave as in: Her manner was grave.)
serious and/or solemn
The exact meaning of this sense of grave can depend upon its context. For example:
- "This is a grave problem," or "a situation of the utmost gravity." -- important, dangerous, or causing worry
- "She was in a grave mood upon returning from the funeral." -- sad or solemn
- "She looked me in the eye and gravely promised." -- in a sincere and serious manner

(2) (meaning too common or rare to warrant focus)
Better known meanings of grave and gravity:
- grave -- a place where a dead body is buried
- gravity -- in the sense of physics to refer to the force of attraction between all masses in the universe--especially the force that causes things to fall toward the earth
Less common meanings of grave:
- death -- as in "A message from beyond the grave."
- describing a color as dark
- to sculpt with a chisel
- to clean and coat the bottom of a wooden ship with pitch
- grave accent -- a punctuation mark (`) that is used in some non-English languages, and that is placed over some letters of the alphabet to tell how they are pronounced.
- grave musical direction -- in a slow and solemn manner

grave in The Scarlet Letter

grave

in

The Scarlet Letter