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.
The wet may provide more grip when it's very wet, but the extra flexibility of the inter will always win out if the conditions are variable, as they were at Silverstone.
From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2025
There are no signs of violence, and the grave was probably opened multiple times over the course of several decades to inter new bodies.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 19, 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
At Hollywood Forever, and just about every other cemetery, you can inter a box or urn of ashes in the ground under a gravestone, where you’d lay the casket in a traditional burial.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2023
Then he said quietly, “Thought o’ jus’ letting Buckbeak go...tryin ter make him fly away...but how d’yeh explain ter a hippogriff it’s gotta go inter hidin’?
From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" 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
Red Bull had taken the cue from Pierre Gasly's Alpha Tauri, who pitted for inters shortly after the start, but was for several laps stuck behind slower cars.
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
While these thus in and out had circled Rome, Look, what the lightning blasted, Arruns takes, And it inters with murmurs dolorous, And calls the place Bidental.
From The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) by Bullen, A. H. (Arthur Henry)
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
After a memorial service in France and a Cuban state funeral, his ashes were interred in Havana.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 31, 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
From Scotland to China, and from Iceland to West Africa, they have been interred under heavy stones, staked or nailed into graves.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2025
Already they had discovered nine burials, one body placed in a big funerary urn, all apparently interred at the same time.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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
After regaining control of Taejon in the fall of 1950, the Army began recovering remains from the area and temporarily interring them at a United Nations military cemetery.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 21, 2023
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.
