burial
n.the act of putting a dead body into the ground. It can also mean the ceremony that happens when someone is buried.
n.the act or ceremony of interring a dead body in the ground or a tomb. Often used to refer to the entire funeral process or the specific physical placement of remains.
“The burial takes place tomorrow morning.”
“The family requested a private burial at the local cemetery following the church service.”
“Archaeologists discovered an ancient burial site containing artifacts that suggest the civilization held complex beliefs about the afterlife and social hierarchy.”
Countable when referring to a specific event or site; uncountable when referring to the general practice or act.
Usage burial chambers
“Fletcher said the UN and its partners responding to Ebola must double the number of teams ensuring safe and dignified burials, triple the treatment capacity, improve contact tracing, and deploy more experienced managers.”
“WHO said community trust is now central to the response, and urged greater reliance on local leaders and trusted community networks to find cases and contacts, encourage early care-seeking, and ensure safe burials.”
Common in science and history writing
From Middle English beriel, a backformation from Old English byrġels, which was re-interpreted as a plural, itself from byrġan (“to bury”) + -els. By surface analysis, bury + -al, but originally unrelated to this suffix.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.