bury
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bury", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "bury" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "bury" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bury is aEnglishverb. It means: To ritualistically inter in a grave or tomb. Pronounced /ˈbɛɹ.i/. It ranks #8,396 in English word frequency. Often confused with by and but.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bury |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈbɛɹ.i/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #8,396 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bury is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈbɛɹ.i/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,396 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for bury, with forms such as "bbury", "bruy", and "burry". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "but", "buy", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰergʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *burgijaną Proto-West Germanic *burgijan Old English byrġan Middle English berien English bury Middle English burien, berien, from Old English byrġan, from Proto-West Germanic *burgijan, from Pr… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is bury, spelled B-U-R-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To ritualistically inter in a grave or tomb.
- 2To ritualistically inter in a grave or tomb.
- 3To place in the ground.
- 4To hide or conceal as if by covering with earth or another substance.
- 5To hide or conceal as if by covering with earth or another substance.
- 6To hide or conceal as if by covering with earth or another substance.
- 7To suppress and hide away in one's mind.
- 8To put an end to; to abandon.
- 9To score (a goal).
- 10To ruin the image or character of another wrestler; usually by embarrassing or defeating them in dominating fashion.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰergʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *burgijaną Proto-West Germanic *burgijan Old English byrġan Middle English berien English bury 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.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbury,bruy,burry,buryy,buyr,ubry
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for bury
Misspelling Variants of "bury"
Frequency rank: #8,396 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: