It's a rock. Usually granite. It's at the head of someone's grave. It usually has his or her name on it, as well as the date of his or her birth and death. Sometimes it has a phrase about him or her: "Our loving mother" or "Here lies Les Moore; no less, no more" or "Here lies one whose name was writ in water".

Also a town in Arizona and a brand of frozen pizza.

Synonyms: gravestone, headstone.

See also: tomb.

A fantastic movie from 1993 detailing the circumstances leading up to and following the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.

You can get the rest of the actors and plot summary from IMDb, so I won't go into the rest here. But this movie is a terrific recreation of the original American Wild West, with all its ups and downs. The story takes place as Kansas lawman Wyatt Earp and his two brothers are retiring to Tombstone, an up-and-coming city in the growing West ever since silver was discovered in mines nearby. The town has attracted its share of gentlemen and ladies, but also a sizable crowd of early gangsters. Wyatt and his brothers do their best to keep to their own business and leave the law to other men, but the Cowboys -- possibly America's first instance of organized crime -- have other ideas. For a while, anyways.

A brand of frozen pizza*. The commercials for Tombstone usually feature two bad-ass guys who have just finished some kind of battle. One bad-ass is clearly the loser - he's neck-deep in quicksand, or hanging off the edge of a cliff, or something like that. At this point, the winning bad-ass invariably leans over and growls,

What do you want on your tombstone?

At which point the other guy looks up, and deadpans a line like, "Sausage and pepperoni!". Then, after a few product shots, the commercial ends with the two guys eating the pizza, apparently putting their differences aside in order to enjoy the great taste of Tombstone together.


 
*On a side note, I just found out that while frozen cheese pizza is regulated by the Food And Drug Administration, frozen pepperoni pizza is regulated by the Department Of Agriculture. How weird is that?

The movie Tombstone, was one of the greatest western movies of all time. One of the most intriguing scenes is where Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday, and Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo converse in Latin. The scene carries an air of mystery because their conversation is unknown to us, however the conversation is even more interesting when interpreted because it is full of hidden meanings and aphorisms that say many things at once.

The scene is in the casino that Wyatt Earp is running, immediately after a play in the nearby theatre. Jonny Ringo comes in with his gang and confronts Doc Holiday. Right before the conversation Doc Holiday says "He reminds me of me, now I really hate him". Tempers flare in the Latin conversation and result in Ringo showing off his gun wielding skills by twirling his revolver around. Doc then lightens the mood by imitating him with his small liquor cup. If you ever wonder what they said in that short Latin scene, here is the full dialogue as well as the translation.

Doc : In vino veritas.
Ringo : Age quod agis.
Doc : Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego.
Ringo : Juventus stultorum magister.
Doc : In pace requiescat!
That was the Latin, and here is the translation. Note that the phrases are fairly common and a direct translation would not make much sense. Look at their individual write-ups for a more thorough explanation. I have added a brief paragraph explaining the lines one by one as I interpreted them.

Doc : In wine there is truth.
Doc Holiday is excusing his own behavior here, and further insulting Johnny Ringo by saying that he is drunk, and saying truthful things he would otherwise not reveal. He had previously said he hated Johnny Ringo for being similar to himself.
Ringo : Do what you do / Watch what you do.
This is one of the most interesting lines because it means more than just watch what you do. The line can be interpreted as be careful, or people do what they do (saying that Doc Holiday is drunk because he is a drunkard), and it can also mean something along the lines of do what you do best, which would be gunfight since Ringo had apparently heard of Holiday's skill. It is a challenge and an insult combined into one.
Doc : Tell it to someone else, not I.
This line is dismissive. Doc Holiday is conveying the fact that he doesn't care what Johnny Ringo is saying and that he doesn't care what his advice is.
Ringo : Youth is the teacher of fools.
When Ringo taps his pistol he says this, which conveys the idea that Doc Holiday is inexperienced (youthfull) and ignorant of the danger he is getting himself into.
Doc : Rest in peace!
To end the conversation Doc Holiday throws the previous warning back into Ringo's face. Doc tells him to rest in peace, or to die, because Ringo is unaware of the danger that Doc presents.
The conversation, at first, does not seem to flow well, but there are several hidden meanings and ideas being passed back and forth. The use of these Latin phrases carries a lot of symbolism and meaning in the way they were used here. Now you know what the phrases translate, so go watch it again, this time with the knowledge of what they say so you can find the hidden implications of their conversation.

In modern mathematics, the use of QED to indicate the end of a proof has been replaced by a square known as a 'tombstone'. Less commonly, it is sometimes referred to as a 'Halmos', in honour of Paul Halmos, the mathematician who popularised its use (Halmos is also credited with the introduction of the abbreviation 'iff').

It seems to be a matter of preference as to whether the square is filled or not- as a UK undergraduate, the empty square was rarely encountered, but that seems to have been Halmos' original choice. Unicode merely specifies an end of proof symbol U+220E, which renders as empty in Internet Explorer, but filled in Firefox: your browser presents it (if at all) as ∎. Default behaviour in AMS LaTeX is an empty square, which is automatically placed at the end of theorem proofs; for those who prefer a solid square, include the following code in the preamble:

\renewcommand{\qed}{\nobreak \ifvmode \relax \else
    \ifdim\lastskip<1.5em \hskip-\lastskip
    \hskip1.5em plus0em minus0.5em \fi \nobreak
    \vrule height0.4em width0.4em depth0.25em\fi}

Perhaps the strangest variation I encountered was by one of my Russian lecturers, who would use a circle instead of a square- indicating the start of a proof with an empty circle, and the end with a solid disc. He applied the same procedure to examples, but with triangles instead of circles. I suspect this was a personal quirk rather than an established tradition, however.

Tomb"stone` (?), n.

A stone erected over a grave, to preserve the memory of the deceased.

 

© Webster 1913.

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