: a church officer or employee who takes care of the church property and performs related minor duties (such as ringing the bell for services and digging graves)
Examples of sexton in a Sentence
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Revere instructed church sexton Robert Newman to alert patriots across the river in Charlestown when British troops began to march.
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Mike Deehan, Axios, 18 Feb. 2025
Watching in horror as the city made plans to bury the buried and raze the tombstones, Trinity in late 1897 sent John Watson, a sexton of the nearby St. John’s Chapel, to record information from the cemetery’s headstones for posterity.
—Christina Ray Stanton, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Oct. 2024
At several synagogues, services were interrupted as the sextons stood up and called out the names of young men who were being summoned to duty; other worshipers, on hearing the news, quickly folded their prayer shawls and departed; some returned later, in uniform, to bid their families goodbye.
—Time, 11 Oct. 2023
The pair grew up in Seminary, a historically Black community near the Virginia Theological Seminary, where their grandfather worked as a sexton.
—Peter Jamison, Washington Post, 30 Apr. 2023
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Mike Deehan, Axios, 18 Feb. 2025
Watching in horror as the city made plans to bury the buried and raze the tombstones, Trinity in late 1897 sent John Watson, a sexton of the nearby St. John’s Chapel, to record information from the cemetery’s headstones for posterity.
—Christina Ray Stanton, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Oct. 2024
At several synagogues, services were interrupted as the sextons stood up and called out the names of young men who were being summoned to duty; other worshipers, on hearing the news, quickly folded their prayer shawls and departed; some returned later, in uniform, to bid their families goodbye.
—Time, 11 Oct. 2023
The pair grew up in Seminary, a historically Black community near the Virginia Theological Seminary, where their grandfather worked as a sexton.
—Peter Jamison, Washington Post, 30 Apr. 2023
See All Example Sentences for sexton
Cite this Entry
“Sexton.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sexton. Accessed 24 May. 2025.
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sexton
noun
sex·ton
ˈsek-stən 
: an official of a church who takes care of church buildings and property
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