as in pile
a small quantity of stones heaped together that usually marks a place
A cairn of loose stones marked the site.
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Recent Examples of cairn
Most remarkable is the cairn-tomb of Gavrinis, one of Europe's great repositories of megalithic art, its interior replete with swirling patterns carved into the rock some 6,000 years ago.
—
The Week Uk, theweek, 12 Oct. 2024
The bones excavated at the site were returned to King William Island in 1994 and interred in a memorial cairn.
—Katie Hunt, CNN, 11 Oct. 2024
Ranger died in 1940 and was buried at the summit of Mount Hood, which is marked by a stone cairn and an engraved plaque.
—Meira Gebel, Axios, 20 Sep. 2024
The trail can be confusing so keep an eye open for cairns and tree notches serving as trail markers.
—Roger Naylor, The Arizona Republic, 18 Sep. 2024
See All Example Sentences for cairn
The Week Uk, theweek, 12 Oct. 2024
The bones excavated at the site were returned to King William Island in 1994 and interred in a memorial cairn.
—Katie Hunt, CNN, 11 Oct. 2024
Ranger died in 1940 and was buried at the summit of Mount Hood, which is marked by a stone cairn and an engraved plaque.
—Meira Gebel, Axios, 20 Sep. 2024
The trail can be confusing so keep an eye open for cairns and tree notches serving as trail markers.
—Roger Naylor, The Arizona Republic, 18 Sep. 2024
See All Example Sentences for cairn
Recent Examples of Synonyms for cairn
Noun
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Banfield had to go back to the pile, as it was called, for nine straight days.—
Rachel Burchfield,
Forbes.com,
11 Sep. 2025
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The pile-in on Broadcom comes after Oracle nearly turned into a hyperscaler overnight.—
Pia Singh,
CNBC,
10 Sep. 2025
Noun
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These enormous mounds of debris left over from the feasts contained thousands of bones.—
Maria Mocerino,
Interesting Engineering,
13 Sep. 2025
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That left right-hander Connor Brogdon – fresh off the plane from Salt Lake – on the mound when the Mariners scored the go-ahead run in the seventh inning.—
Jeff Fletcher,
Oc Register,
13 Sep. 2025
Noun
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The parents of an older girl named Sarah Summers—the very name still carries a shiver of excitement—gave me her old clothes from time to time, in washed, folded stacks that were permeated with a middle-class laundry fragrance, the smell of another world, better than my own.—
Rachel Kushner,
New Yorker,
14 Sep. 2025
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Tim Cook and his team now have a stack of real-world consumer information on a cheaper and lower-specced MacBook thanks to the Walmart offer.—
Ewan Spence,
Forbes.com,
14 Sep. 2025
Noun
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The post also includes videos of Twiggs skiing down a mountain.—
Marni Rose McFall,
MSNBC Newsweek,
16 Sep. 2025
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The evening after Jîna’s death, on assignment for the newspaper Ham-Mihan, my friend and colleague Elaheh Mohammadi drove eight hours overnight, through winding mountains and narrow roads, to Saqqez, Jîna’s hometown in Kurdistan.—
Fatemeh Jamalpour,
Literary Hub,
15 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Cairn.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cairn. Accessed 17 Sep. 2025.
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