This week's theme: lesser-known counterparts of common words.

inhume (in-HYOOM) verb tr.

   To bury.

[From Latin inhumare (to bury), from in (in) + humus (earth). Ultimately
from the Indo-European root dhghem- (earth) that also sprouted human,
homicide, homage, chameleon, chamomile, and Persian zamindar (landholder).]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=inhume

Would someone who inhumes be called inhuman? Only if trying to hide the
result of a homicide. A quick search of news articles shows that people
exhume things 60 times as often as inhuming. And what do they exhume? Dead
bodies, of course. We can't exhume anything more often than we inhume. It's
just that the exhuming makes more news.

-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)

  "NAACP officials staged a rather bizarre funeral this week in Detroit.
   They buried a word. With thousands of eager onlookers cheering the
   cause, the civil-rights organization symbolically inhumed the N-word."
   James Ragland; Funeral is Not Enough to Put N-word to Rest;
   Dallas Morning News; Jul 14, 2007.

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The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a
criminal. -Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author (1900-1980)

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Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/inhume.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/inhume.ram

Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/inhume.html

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