Word.ws English Dictionary

-bury

/-bɹi/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

New Zealand/-bɹi/

-bury suffix: a placename suffix indicating a fortified place.

Suffix

-bury

  1. A placename suffix indicating a fortified place.
    • Some of these hilltops – Sidbury, Quarley, Danebury and Woolbury – were later, in the sixth and fifth centuries, appropriated for the building of hillforts.1983, Barry Cunliffe, chapter 3, in Danebury Hillfort, Stroud: Tempus
    Synonyms:
    -borough, -boro, -burg, -burgh

Synonyms of -bury

Origin of -bury

From Old English byriġ, the dative case of burg (“fortified place”) (whence borough); doublet of -borough and -burg. Due to the collapse of the case system between Old and Middle English, many placenames retain a fossilized dative form, as places would most commonly have been invoked in the dative (after a preposition in, at, to etc.).

Questions about -bury

What does -bury mean?
-bury means a placename suffix indicating a fortified place.
What part of speech is -bury?
-bury is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -bury?
-bury is pronounced /-bɹi/ (UK).

Words near -bury in the dictionary

  1. -brough
  2. -burg
  3. -burger
  4. -burgers
  5. -burgh
  6. -bury
  7. -buterol
  8. -buvir
  9. -by
  10. -c-
  11. -cade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -bury (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl--bury.wav.

Cite this entry: “-bury.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-bury. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.