Burials

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The procedure of laying the deceased to rest, often in a grave or tomb
2. The practice of interring a deceased person beneath the earth in a grave or tomb
3. The ceremony and process of depositing remains in a burial site for final resting

Etymology: "Burials" is the plural of "burial," and the singular has an odd history. Its ancestor in Old English was "byrġels," formed from the verb "byrġan" (to bury) plus the suffix "-els," a pattern that marked a noun for an action or its result. Readers would naturally assume the modern ending is the ordinary suffix "-al," as in "refusal" or "arrival," and the word looks like a derivative of "bury" for that reason. The resemblance is coincidental: the "-al" ending arrived only by surface analogy. The real twist lies in the Middle English stage. The word appeared as "biriels," which speakers reinterpreted as a plural. They then formed a new singular, "biriel," which was later rendered as "burial." So the form we treat as the base word began life as a misread plural, and the singular we use every day was built backward from it.

Synonyms: interments, funerals, entombments, graves, sepultures