Other forms: interred
To inter is to bury a body in the ground. Interred in the churchyard, inter the remains, interred with honours.
It is the formal word and it appears on memorials and in records where bury would be too plain. Disinter is its opposite, meaning to dig up. Note the stress on the second syllable; and that the Latin is in plus terra, earth — so interring is literally putting into the earth.
1verbinterTo bury a body in the ground.
“The old soldier was interred in the village churchyard.”
inter is a burying.
Vulgar Latin interrare is in plus terra, earth. Terrace, terrain and territory come from the same earth.
Proto-Indo-European
*ters-
Vulgar Latin
*interrāre — to put in earth
Old French
enterrer
Middle English
enteren
English, today
inter
From Middle English enteren, borrowed from Old French enterrer, enterer, from Vulgar Latin interrāre (“to put in earth”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA