bury - Wiktionary, the free dictionary


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Middle English burien, berien, from Old English byrġan, from Proto-West Germanic *burgijan, from Proto-Germanic *burgijaną (“to keep safe”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰergʰ- (“to defend, protect”).

Cognate with Icelandic byrgja (“to cover, shut; to hold in”); West Frisian bergje (“to keep”), German bergen (“to save/rescue something”), Danish bjerge (“to save/rescue something or somebody”); also Eastern Lithuanian bir̃ginti (“to save, spare”), Russian бере́чь (beréčʹ, “to spare”), Ossetian ӕмбӕрзын (æmbærzyn, “to cover”).

The spelling with ⟨u⟩ represents the pronunciation of the West Midland and Southern dialects, while the Modern English pronunciation with /ɛ/ is from the Kentish dialects.[1]

bury (third-person singular simple present buries, present participle burying, simple past and past participle buried)

  1. (transitive) To ritualistically inter in a grave or tomb.
  2. (transitive) To place in the ground.

    bury a bone;  bury the embers

  3. (transitive, often figurative) To hide or conceal as if by covering with earth or another substance.

    She buried her face in the pillow.

    They buried us in paperwork.

    • 2013 June 29, “High and wet”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 28:

      Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale. […] Rock-filled torrents smashed vehicles and homes, burying victims under rubble and sludge.

    • 2017 June 29, Eugene Mark, “Time to Truly Understand Thailand’s 1932 Revolution”, in The Diplomat‎[1], Diplomat Media Inc., retrieved 2020-06-23:

      The Thai government has been trying to bury the memory of the revolution that gave birth to democracy in Thailand.

  4. (transitive, figuratively) To suppress and hide away in one's mind.

    secrets kept buried

    She buried her shame and put on a smiling face.

  5. (transitive, figuratively) To put an end to; to abandon.

    They buried their argument and shook hands.

  6. (transitive, figuratively) To score a goal.
  7. (transitive, figurative, slang) To kill or murder.
  8. To render imperceptible by other, more prominent stimuli; drown out.

    vocals buried in the mix (music production)

  9. (transitive, figurative, humorous) To outlive.

    Grandpa’s still in excellent health. He’ll bury us all!

  10. (professional wrestling slang) To ruin the image or character of another wrestler; usually by embarrassing or defeating them in dominating fashion.

to inter a corpse in a grave or tomb

to place in the ground

to hide or conceal as if by covering with earth

to suppress and hide away in one's mind

to put an end to; to abandon

to render imperceptible by other, more prominent stimuli

bury (plural buries)

  1. (obsolete) A burrow.[2]

    • 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter II, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC:

      Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out.

  1. ^ Upward, Christopher & George Davidson. 2011. The History of English Spelling. Wiley-Blackwell.
  2. ^ John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “bury”, in The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, volumes I (A–O), Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1991, →ISBN, page 190/687.

See borough.

bury (plural buries)

  1. A borough; a manor

    • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 5, Twelfth Century”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):

      Indisputable, though very dim to modern vision, rests on its hill-slope that same Bury, Stow, or Town of St. Edmund; already a considerable place, not without traffic

Probably a post-Mongol invasion Turkic borrowing via Ukrainian бу́рий (búryj). Compare Russian бу́рый (búryj).

bury (not comparable, no derived adverb)

  1. brownish dark grey
  2. dark grey with spots

bury m animal

  1. (nominalized, regional) bear (ursid)

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

bury f

  1. inflection of bura:
    1. genitive singular
    2. nominative/accusative/vocative plural
  • bury in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
  • bury in Polish dictionaries at PWN

From English bury. Replacing native form bery.

bury (third-person singular simple present buries, present participle buryin, simple past buriet, past participle buriet)

  1. (transitive) to bury