Interring

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of placing a deceased person into the ground for burial
2. To put a dead body into a grave or tomb as part of funeral rites
3. To lay someone who has died in a grave or a final resting place

Etymology: "Interring" is the present participle of "inter," which comes from Latin "interrare," literally "to bury in earth," built from "in" (into) and "terra" (earth, ground). The root "terra" is the same one behind "terrain," "terrace," and "Mediterranean," meaning "middle of the land." So the verb has always carried the sense of putting something into the ground. English borrowed "inter" in the early 1600s, and its vocabulary was shaped by its Latin origin. The word and its participle appear in formal and legal writing, where "interment" and "interred" are the usual companions, and it has long been more common in funerals and burial records than in everyday speech. It is one of several English words that share the "terra" root, a connection that is easy to miss because "inter" sounds so unlike "terrace."

Synonyms: burying, entombing, inurnment, sepulchering, interment

Antonyms: exhuming, unearthing, disinterring, digging up, retrieving