Definition of "lych-gate" [lych-gate]

• A roofed gateway to a churchyard used originally as a resting place for a bier before burial. (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.

• "A document appears in a plastic sleeve pinned to the wooden stump that once supported a lych-gate."
• "The Tudor Revival style rectory, hall 1950, and adjacent cemetery with lych-gate complete the church complex."
• "It got him toddling again, though, and I guided our expedition through the medieval lych-gate, into the churchyard."