DictionaryAI

funeral

SayFYOO-nuh-ruhl/ˈfjunəɹəl/UK/ˈfjuːnəɹəl/

Pluralfunerals

3 meanings of funeral

Practice

  1. 1
    nouncountable
    A ceremony to honor and remember someone who has died, typically distinguished from a memorial service by the presence of the body.

    The funeral was held at the small chapel where she had been baptized.

    Mourners filled the church for the firefighter's funeral.

    Similarburial, interment

    Note

    English borrowed the word as a plural: Middle French funerailles, "funeral rites," from Medieval Latin funeralia. Behind both stands Latin funus, which could mean the funeral, the death, or the corpse itself. Older English kept that plural, so Giles Collier in 1661 preaches "at the funeralls of" Anne-Mary Child. Today a single ceremony is simply a funeral.

  2. 2
    noundatedcountableplural
    A sermon or oration delivered as part of the rites honoring a person who has died.

    Similareulogy, oration

    Note

    Older usage could let the word stand for the sermon alone rather than the whole service, and in this sense it usually took the plural form. That plural echoes the French and Latin origins traced under the ceremony itself. Modern readers will hear the rite, not the address, so write funeral sermon when the sermon is what you mean.

  3. 3
    adjectiverare
    Alternative spelling of funereal. Uncommon.
    All was funeral gloom and hope never whispered its cheering promises there.
    1852, Benson John Lossing, The Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution
    The very funeral pageantry disguised behind-the-scenes struggles for control over Sidney's image.
    1998, Lisa M. Klein, The Exemplary Sidney and the Elizabethan Sonneteer
    Note

    An older adjective that sits before a noun and can carry either meaning of funereal. In "funeral ceremonies," from the 1888 Dryden translation of Plutarch's Lives, it simply means belonging to a funeral. In Lossing's "funeral gloom" (1852) it means as somber as one. William Carleton could even grade it: "a slower and more funeral pace." Writers now usually keep funeral for the event and funereal for the mood.

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Origin

English borrowed this from Middle French funerailles ("funeral rites"), which came through Medieval and Late Latin from Latin fūnus ("funeral, death, corpse"). The origin of fūnus is unknown, perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰew- ("to die"). First attested in 1437, it displaced the native Old English līcþeġnung.