How to Use cairn in a Sentence

cairn

noun

• These scant details were gleaned from a note the crew left in a cairn.
  — Megan Gannon, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Feb. 2020
• There are stories about a cairn-like structure with a big, flat top.
  — National Geographic, 16 Apr. 2017
• The road tops out on a bald knob where a huge cairn made of cinders denotes the mountain’s high point.
  — Mare Czinar, The Arizona Republic, 17 Sep. 2020
• At the top of the rise, go left where two big cairns mark the unsigned junction of the Spring Valley and Hermit trails.
  — Jill Cassidy, azcentral, 7 Feb. 2020
• The trail was marked with tall stone cairns, which flickered in and out of view, as low-lying clouds swept over us.
  — Jake Halpern, New York Times, 21 Aug. 2019
• But a cairn of loose stones marked the site, and each visitor would, by tradition, toss a fresh stone on the pile.
  — Holland Cotter, New York Times, 1 June 2017
• Giant stone cairns mark old pathways once used by traders to find their way through fog and heavy snow.
  — New York Times, 16 Apr. 2020
• There are many signs to guide you on the wide path, which passes a survey marker and ends at a large rock topped with a cairn.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 3 June 2021
• Beyond the huge cairn, views of the San Francisco Peaks stand out on the northeast skyline.
  — Mare Czinar, azcentral, 7 June 2019
• Where there are no such surfaces — only loose dirt and stones, as on the approach to Chistau — there are cairns to show the way.
  — The Washington Post, The Denver Post, 30 Mar. 2017
• The cross atop a stone cairn in Grytviken on the island of South Georgia is a memorial to Shackleton.
  — New York Times, 18 Mar. 2022
• In a touching thread, Pietro revisits a cairn on a mountain path where climbers sign a book nestled in the stones.
  — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 May 2022
• Images now show a cairn, a stack or mound of stones built as a memorial or landmark, where the monolith once stood.
  — NBC News, 29 Nov. 2020
• The monument was laid out around 3000 BCE, and, soon after, a chambered cairn was built in its center.
  — Hugh Raffles, The New York Review of Books, 9 Oct. 2020
• It's now been replaced by a cairn, a stack mound of stones built as a memorial or landmark, where the 10-foot monolith once stood.
  — NBC News, 30 Nov. 2020
• The other mural is more natural and features a portion of a tree trunk and a cairn on top of a small boulder.
  — Steve Annear, BostonGlobe.com, 2 Mar. 2023
• Additionally, the guidelines state that people should not build their own cairns out of the nearby rocks on the trail.
  — Kate Perez, USA TODAY, 13 July 2023
• The cairn would be a series of granite river boulders, and with the aluminum butterfly would stand 12 feet tall.
  — Lynn Horsley, kansascity, 4 May 2018
• In treeless areas, stacked rocks known as cairns often serve as trail markers.
  — Mike Brehm, USA TODAY, 3 Aug. 2023
• Researchers believe this cairn was built later, in the 18th or 19th century.
  — National Geographic, 16 Oct. 2019
• Each park differs on how cairns are used but moving them can mislead visitors who are hiking on the trails.
  — Kate Perez, USA TODAY, 13 July 2023
• The stone cairn is decorated with a machine gun belt, a large-caliber bullet and a Russian army helmet.
  — Owen Matthews, Newsweek, 17 Jan. 2018
• Fit families can extend the hike to create a five-mile loop tracing Tenaya Creek, past a decorative cairn field, across two bridges, and back along the south side of Tenaya Canyon.
  — Ashley M. Biggers, Outside Online, 28 Aug. 2014
• The four-mile route, which reaches an altitude of more than 6,000 feet, is now marked only by ancient cairns, piles of reindeer antlers and bones, and the foundations of a stone shelter.
  — Tom Metcalfe, Scientific American, 16 Apr. 2020
• The lengthening shadows magnified a series of lumps on the sidewalk, like cairns marking a mountain trail.
  — Anne Barnard, New York Times, 23 Oct. 2017
• Many of the people who stop to marvel liken his figures to cairns, piles of rock that have turned up around the world since prehistoric times to mark pathways, honor deities or commemorate the dead.
  — Patrick Farrell, New York Times, 14 Sep. 2017
• Previously, researchers had found piles of loose rock, known as cairns, on the southwestern part of Jomfruland.
  — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Oct. 2023
• Francis Crozier left it behind inside a stony cairn on King William Island before all the crew members perished.
  — Meagan Flynn, Anchorage Daily News, 29 Aug. 2019
• Researchers excavated and examined the bones in 2013 before returning them to the grave with a new plaque and memorial cairn.
  — Livia Gershon, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 May 2021
• For Iman, cairn-building became a daily means of doing all these things while also sorting out her memories.
  — New York Times, 18 Nov. 2021

Last Updated: 23 Sep 2024