"burke" meaning in English

See burke in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /bɜː(ɹ)k/ Audio: en-us-burke.ogg [US] Forms: burkes [plural]
enPR: bûrk Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)k Head templates: {{en-noun}} burke (plural burkes)
  1. (British, slang) Alternative form of berk Tags: British, alt-of, alternative, slang Alternative form of: berk
    Sense id: en-burke-en-noun-X~m58HUG Categories (other): British English
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Etymology number: 2

Verb

IPA: /bɜː(ɹ)k/ Audio: en-us-burke.ogg [US] Forms: burkes [present, singular, third-person], burking [participle, present], burked [participle, past], burked [past]
enPR: bûrk Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)k Etymology: Eponymous, from William Burke. Head templates: {{en-verb}} burke (third-person singular simple present burkes, present participle burking, simple past and past participle burked)
  1. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang) To murder by suffocation. Tags: Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, UK, slang
    Sense id: en-burke-en-verb-hM9soO3u Categories (other): Australian English, British English, Irish English, New Zealand English
  2. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, historical) To murder for the same purpose as Burke, to kill in order to have a body to sell to anatomists, surgeons, etc. Tags: Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, UK, historical, slang
    Sense id: en-burke-en-verb-D1L6B4bF Categories (other): Australian English, British English, Irish English, New Zealand English, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 10 21 39 29 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 8 22 44 26
  3. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang) To smother; to conceal, hush up, suppress. Tags: Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, UK, slang
    Sense id: en-burke-en-verb-qsGWzQ3a Categories (other): Australian English, British English, Irish English, New Zealand English
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Derived forms: burker Related terms: bishop
Etymology number: 1

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for burke meaning in English (6.1kB)

{
  "derived": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0",
      "word": "burker"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_number": 1,
  "etymology_text": "Eponymous, from William Burke.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "burkes",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
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    {
      "form": "burking",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
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    {
      "form": "burked",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
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    {
      "form": "burked",
      "tags": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0",
      "word": "bishop"
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  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Australian English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
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        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
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          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "New Zealand English",
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1829 February 2, Times (London), 3/5",
          "text": "As soon as the executioner proceeded to his duty, the cries of ‘Burke him, Burke him—give him no rope’... were vociferated... ‘Burke Hare too!’"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To murder by suffocation."
      ],
      "id": "en-burke-en-verb-hM9soO3u",
      "links": [
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        ],
        [
          "suffocation",
          "suffocation"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang) To murder by suffocation."
      ],
      "tags": [
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        "New-Zealand",
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        {
          "ref": "1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Keepsake 1833, One Peep was Enough, pages 303–304",
          "text": "\"I don’t know that,\" interrupted the landlady; \"Williams is a good hanging name: there was Williams who murdered the Marr's family, and Williams who burked all those poor dear children; I dare say he is some relation of theirs; but to think of his coming to the White Hart—it's no place for his doings, I can tell him: he sha'n't poison his wife in my house; out he goes this very night—I'll take the letter to him myself.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1833, T. Hook, Parson's Daughter, II. i. 26",
          "text": "Perhaps he is Burked, and his body sold for nine pounds.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To murder for the same purpose as Burke, to kill in order to have a body to sell to anatomists, surgeons, etc."
      ],
      "id": "en-burke-en-verb-D1L6B4bF",
      "links": [
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        [
          "in order to",
          "in order to"
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          "have",
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        "(UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, historical) To murder for the same purpose as Burke, to kill in order to have a body to sell to anatomists, surgeons, etc."
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        "Australia",
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          "kind": "other",
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          "ref": "1888, Rudyard Kipling, “A Bank Fraud,”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio, published 2005, page 128",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1953, Robert Graves, Poems, section 4",
          "text": "Socrates and Plato burked the issue.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "To smother; to conceal, hush up, suppress."
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        "(UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang) To smother; to conceal, hush up, suppress."
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    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-ɜː(ɹ)k"
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    {
      "audio": "en-us-burke.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/0b/En-us-burke.ogg/En-us-burke.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/En-us-burke.ogg",
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    {
      "enpr": "bûrk"
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{
  "etymology_number": 2,
  "forms": [
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      "tags": [
        "plural"
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        "(British, slang) Alternative form of berk"
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    {
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  "word": "burke"
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  "derived": [
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      "examples": [
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          "ref": "1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Keepsake 1833, One Peep was Enough, pages 303–304",
          "text": "\"I don’t know that,\" interrupted the landlady; \"Williams is a good hanging name: there was Williams who murdered the Marr's family, and Williams who burked all those poor dear children; I dare say he is some relation of theirs; but to think of his coming to the White Hart—it's no place for his doings, I can tell him: he sha'n't poison his wife in my house; out he goes this very night—I'll take the letter to him myself.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
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          "text": "Perhaps he is Burked, and his body sold for nine pounds.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        "To murder for the same purpose as Burke, to kill in order to have a body to sell to anatomists, surgeons, etc."
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        "(UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, historical) To murder for the same purpose as Burke, to kill in order to have a body to sell to anatomists, surgeons, etc."
      ],
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        "Australia",
        "Ireland",
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          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "1888, Rudyard Kipling, “A Bank Fraud,”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio, published 2005, page 128",
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          "text": "Socrates and Plato burked the issue.",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.