Skip to main content
PlainSpell

burglary

/ˈbɝ.ɡlɚ.i/noun

burglary is a noun meaning “The crime of unlawfully breaking into a vehicle, house, store, or other enclosure with the intent to steal” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-U-R-G-L-A-R-Y and has 3 syllables, and it appears 2.8 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of burglary is burglaries.

What does burglary mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The crime of unlawfully breaking into a vehicle, house, store, or other enclosure with the intent to steal.

  2. 2

    Under the common law, breaking and entering of the dwelling of another at night with the intent to commit a felony.

  3. 3

    USUnder the Model Penal Code, entering a building or occupied structure with purpose to commit a crime therein, unless the premises are at the time open to the public or the actor is licensed or privileged to enter.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce burglary?

  • UK /ˈbɜː.ɡlə.ɹi/
  • US /ˈbɝ.ɡlɚ.i/

Burglary has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-burglary.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of burglary

  • burglaries plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is burglary?

Burglary appears 2.8 times per million words in written English, the 16,228th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Burglary in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense the crime of breaking into:

LanguageWords
Frenchcambriolage
GermanEinbruch, Einbruchdiebstahl
Portuguesearrombamento
Spanishallanamiento de morada, desvalijamiento, desvalijo

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does burglary come from?

From New Latin burglaria. By surface analysis, burglar + -y. Displaced native Old English hūsbryċe (literally “house-breach”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).