In America growing up in the Midwest, I've always heard people pronounce the word "bury" as if it were pronounced sounding the same as the word "berry". Ever since I've noticed this many years ba...
1 How did the phrase "bury one's head in the sand" meaning "to ignore a bad situation hoping it will disappear" (coming from the misbelief that ostriches do this to hide from predators) end up being part of English? At what time did the idiom and perhaps stereotype enter general knowledge among English speakers?
What is the name of the tactic that politicians use to bury people with ...
In the UK it is called chasing: When running cables or pipes up (or along) a masonry wall, the neatest method is to bury (or, in builders terms, chase) them in the wall surface. (From a DIY site) Although this meaning doesn't appear in dictionaries I have checked, it probably derives from: chase2: Engrave (metal, or a design on metal) Edit: Just noticed that Merriam-Webster has this definition ...
The spelling of busy (and bury) is the result of dialect mixture. Different Middle English varieties had different outcomes of Old English short /y/. In the East Midlands variety that underlies the standard, it became short /u/ as in blush; in Kent, short /ɛ/ as in merry (for people who pronounce it with the same vowel as in met, anyhow); in the West Midlands, short /i/ as in bridge: all ...
Does “burrow nose-deep” literally mean “dig in / bury deeply,” or have other figurative meanings like intimacy? To me “burrow nose-deep” in episodes of Emily Dickinson and Obama’s replacement of staff appear to be used in different meaning? Is it an idiom or simple combination of “burrow” and "nose deep.”?
It looks like the modern pronunciation of bury comes from dialects like Kentish, while the spelling comes from dialects like those in the West Midlands. Build, buy, busy, and bury all have a "b" before the vowel: this is the "labial consonant" mentioned by the OED.