Other forms: funerals
A funeral is the ceremony held after somebody has died. Black clothes, a church or a crematorium, and everybody standing about afterwards.
The word covers the whole occasion, and it brings its own vocabulary: a funeral service, a funeral procession, a funeral director who arranges every part of it. It sits alongside burial, which is the putting into the ground, and a wake, which is the gathering after. There is one blunt idiom, since telling somebody it's your funeral means do as you like, but the consequences are yours alone.
1nounfuneralThe ceremony held for a person who has died.
“The funeral is on Thursday morning.”
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰew-
Latin
fūnerālis — having to do with a funeral
Medieval Latin
fūnerālia — funeral rites
Middle French
funerailles — funeral rites
English, today
funeral
Borrowed from Middle French funerailles (“funeral rites”), from Medieval Latin fūnerālia (“funeral rites”), originally neuter plural of Latin fūnerālis (“having to do with a funeral”), from Latin fūnus (“funeral, death, corpse”), origin unknown, perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European dʰew- (“to die”). Singular and plural used interchangeably in English until circa 1700. The adjective funereal is first attested 1725, by influence of Middle French funerail, from Latin funereus, from funus. 1437. Displaced native līcþeġnung.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA