Definition of "gravedigger" [grave•dig•ger]

• One that digs graves. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Totodet was still traumatized by his job as the jail's "gravedigger," dumping hundreds of his fellow prisoners into mass graves."
• "He dismissed Stalin, Patenaude reports, as an "outstanding mediocrity" and the "gravedigger" of the revolution."
• "In 1936 the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker."