(n.) Any inscription set upon a building; especially, one which has to do with the building itself, its founding or dedication.
(n.) A citation from some author, or a sentence framed for the purpose, placed at the beginning of a work or of its separate divisions; a motto.
Example Sentences:
(1) "But when you pull together all the evidence – archaeological, epigraphic and literary – it is overwhelming and, we believe, conclusive: they did kill their children, and on the evidence of the inscriptions, not just as an offering for future favours but fulfilling a promise that had already been made.
(2) In one of the epigraphs to the poem "Namely", a bristlingly humorous disquisition on his own unusual surname, he quotes Angus Calder, in Scotland on Sunday: "Few people thought Mick Imlah , who teaches at Oxford, was a 'Scottish poet'."
(3) One of the two epigraphs to my novel Boxer, Beetle , which contains a character based on a young Robert Moses, is a quotation from Jacobs: "We are all accustomed to believe that maps and reality are necessarily related, or that if they are not, we can make them so by altering reality."
(4) The Souls of Black Folk might appear to be a collection of essays (each chapter also has a musical epigraph derived from “10 master songs” from the Negro tradition) but it has a powerfully coherent inner structure.
(5) We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power we shall soon cease to be a great nation.” Tizard’s wise words might be an epigraph – and an epitaph – for our story since then.
(6) His chapter, "The Sorrow Songs", expands on the significance of the bars of music from famous Negro spirituals which, alongside verses of English poetry - the two representing the Negro's divided inheritance - are threaded through as epigraphs to each chapter.
(7) In two books, Judd used lines from Camus as epigraphs: "If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it," and "Every wrong idea ends in bloodshed, but it's always the blood of others."
Epitaph
Definition:
(n.) An inscription on, or at, a tomb, or a grave, in memory or commendation of the one buried there; a sepulchral inscription.
(n.) A brief writing formed as if to be inscribed on a monument, as that concerning Alexander: "Sufficit huic tumulus, cui non sufficeret orbis."
(v. t.) To commemorate by an epitaph.
(v. i.) To write or speak after the manner of an epitaph.
Example Sentences:
(1) It is hard to think of a better provisional epitaph than that supplied in the midst of his later troubles by Martin Palouš, one of the first signatories of Charter 77: "Havel was the man who was able to stage this miracle play.
(2) Perhaps the most flattering epitaph for Ronnie Biggs, who has died aged 84, was written for him many years ago by the unlikely figure of the former commissioner of the Metropolitan police Sir Robert Mark .
(3) And a telling line said by one character about Gustave's desire to recreate a bygone era could almost be Anderson's own epitaph: "His world had vanished long before he entered it.
(4) And then he came up with a flat rejection of any attempt to make sense of a 55-year long recording career that had transformed rock, and a line that could stand as his epitaph: "I am what I am, it is what it is.
(5) Uncritically decoding Benefits Street epitomises these dubious qualities, and perhaps this warning could stand as Hall's epitaph.
(6) The poem is structured like a lament, the soldiers' epitaphs interspersed with direct translations of Homer's extended similes, each of which is transcribed, lullingly, twice over.
(7) A few weeks ago our conversation came around to the question of epitaphs.
(8) And his epitaph: “I wouldn’t roll over and I didn’t go quietly.” • Still, Farage’s star continues its rise, as does that of former Guardianista Natalie Bennett .
(9) There are good reasons to be sceptical of the epitaphic impulse to declare “the end of nature”.
(10) Example and epitaph: "It is harder for many people to believe that God loves them than to believe that he exists."
(11) The inscription on Paracelsus' epitaph in the cemetery of Saint Sebastian in Salzburg is critically reviewed with regard to an allusion to Job, Chapter 19.
(12) • Journey into Fear, Uncommon Danger, Cause for Alarm, The Mask of Dimitrios and Epitaph for a Spy are all published by Penguin Modern Classics at £8.99 each.
(13) Do these people know what they're doing – they are inscribing Chinua's epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted expectations.
(14) The Scottish National party has already described the oil grab as Alexander's political epitaph, but what will worry him more is the lack of support from key cabinet allies and normally loyal Scottish Liberal Democrat MPs, such as Malcolm Bruce.
(15) I knew I had to rethink everything.” Joining the Royal Court in 1957, he made his London directing debut with NF Simpson ’s A Resounding Tinkle, and scored an early success with John Osborne ’s Epitaph for George Dillon, which transferred to Broadway.
(16) I don’t want my political epitaph to read that I just balanced the books and cleared up the mess I inherited.
(17) Worse still, it concluded, if Europe failed to surmount its economic crisis the prize would be a “risible memory, or worse, an epitaph for what Europe could have been, should have been.” 11.33am BST Aid donations My colleague Mark Tran, the Guardian's Global Development correspondent, has sent this as a counterpoint to the detractors: Something positive to say about the EU.
(18) One day, if they write an epitaph for me, I hope it will not say I was a triple-amputee, instead just say that Giles Duley was a photographer.
(19) From behind the keys of his supercharged typewriter, Ambler produced an astonishing four more novels in the next three years: Epitaph for a Spy, Cause for Alarm, The Mask of Dimitrios and Journey into Fear.
(20) "Then I went out on Sunday and got the Observer and there was their epitaph … I went to a friend's house and rang a friend and we were both crying on the phone saying 'what a dreadful, dreadful waste, what a dreadful thing'."