to place (a dead body) in a grave or tomb; bury.
to place (a cremation urn) in an aboveground niche or in a grave or tomb.
Her ashes were interred at the crematorium.
to put into the earth.
to forget or remove from consideration; abandon.
Your dreams may be interred by social expectations and the demands of maturity.
intermediate.
interrogation.
interrogative.
between or among
international
together, mutually, or reciprocally
interdependent
interchange
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English enteren, from Middle French enterrer, probably from unattested Vulgar Latin interrāre, derivative of terra “earth”; see in- 2
Middle English < Latin (in some words replacing Middle English entre- < Middle French < Latin inter- ), combining form of inter (preposition and adv.); see interior
How does inter compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Inter means to bury, usually in a tomb or grave. If you loved your cat a lot, you might want to inter her remains in the back yard and make a nice little memorial. Most of the time, the word inter is going to be about burying someone or something. Often times, a family owns a plot of land in a cemetery where all family members are interred when they die. Occasionally, you might see it in the phrase "inter alia," a literary Latin expression meaning "among other things." Your professor is probably a poet and a scholar, inter alia.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Having said that, the inter will always be preferred simply because it is much more flexible - it can be used in quite heavy rain right up to when it's almost dry.
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2025
The museum has an ethical obligation to “exhaust all means” of finding people’s names and families before deciding to inter them, she says.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 23, 2024
On Monday afternoon, half a dozen gravediggers took a break in the shade, waiting for the latest coffin to inter at the cemetery, called Lychakiv.
From New York Times ● Jun. 19, 2023
Christopher Taktak, Pisces’ chief executive, said a solution that is mostly warm water takes about four hours to leave behind bone material that people will inter or take home.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2023
Right, now, we’re gonna split inter two parties an’ follow the trail in different directions.
From "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling
These early inter- and intraregional exchanges were made possible by pack animals like mules, horses, and donkeys, but trade was limited because these animals were biologically ill-suited for the extremes of the Saharan environment.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
This finding echoes existing research suggesting reciprocal processes between stigma at inter- and intra-personal levels and policies.
From Salon ● Nov. 14, 2022
Or is it even about the work — is her success just an excuse for inter- and intra-generational squabbling?
From New York Times ● May 15, 2020
Jordan Hicks has had an inter- ception in two consecutive games.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 13, 2016
I felt as if I had been beamed from earth onto an inter- galactic space station.
From "The London Eye Mystery" by Siobhan Dowd
"But in that moment, why Max didn't stop for inters as well? He kept one lap longer than me but with a different tyre."
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2023
Two laps after Perez pitted, Leclerc and Verstappen also stopped for inters, but such had been Perez's pace, Leclerc emerged from the pits behind the Red Bull, albeit still ahead of Verstappen.
From BBC ● May 29, 2022
According to its website, South-View Cemetery was founded after the end of the Civil War by former slaves and inters the bodies of more than 80,000 African Americans.
From Fox News ● Jul. 30, 2020
If no relative claimed her remains, Dawn was told, Nakesha would most likely be buried on Hart Island, where the city inters unclaimed bodies in mass graves.
From New York Times ● Mar. 3, 2018
Above its mere amusing story the tale breathes an elegy on the many good things that are slain by age before death comes and decently inters the body.
From Henry James by West, Rebecca
In 1989, during the French revolutionary bicentennial celebrations, Condorcet was symbolically interred in the Panthéon, but Brissot, who advocated the export of the revolution to other nations by force, remains a less-celebrated figure.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 27, 2026
A lot of the people interred there are from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and now it’s becoming a place where filmmakers and musicians and artists are considering for their final resting place.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
Evidence suggests the site was prepared with care, and the victims were interred with personal belongings such as bronze jewellery and ceramic drinking vessels.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 9, 2026
His body is interred at the Washington headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, which also contains a small museum in his honour.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2025
“By the time Miss Wren rescued her, Pompey was so depressed she was nearly dead from it. She lingered on for only a few weeks after she arrived, then was interred here.”
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
It notes that mass burials and mass graves were "not a customary way of interring the dead in the Roman Empire", and were mostly used in extreme situations and mass casualty events.
From BBC ● Oct. 18, 2025
“There was way too much death for the system to handle,” recalls Amy Koplow, the executive director of the Hebrew Free Burial Association, which is interring some Jewish people who were at the temporary morgue.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 5, 2021
There are enormous practical difficulties, often involving by-laws on the burial of human remains, when it comes to interring so many bodies.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 4, 2020
What MIT tried to do was suggest that the good Koch did for the institution’s endowment should live after him, while interring the evil with his bones.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2019
We wouldn’t be interring him in the Atlantic, but a pauper’s grave was just as permanent.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
