Burglary

How to spell burglary

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce burglary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does burglary mean?

1. nounThe crime of illegally entering a building, usually a home, with the intention of stealing.

Burglary in a sentence

• The police logged a burglary at the empty house on the corner.

• The insurance claim covered the losses from the burglary last winter.

Where does burglary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes through Anglo-Latin, the legal Latin used in medieval English courts, where the offence appeared as burglaria. That term was built on burgator, a 'housebreaker', which seems to combine the Latin burgus, meaning a fortified town or dwelling (itself borrowed from a Germanic word related to 'borough'), with a verb burgare meaning to break into or break open. The English noun 'burglar' grew out of the same legal vocabulary, and 'burglary' was the name for the crime that burglar committed. It entered English law firmly in the medieval period as a specific charge: breaking into a dwelling with intent to steal. The spelling trap lives in the ending, since the act is spelled '-ary' even though the speaker often reduces it to a vague 'er' sound, tempting people to write 'burglery'.

How the word is built

• burgl- (from burglar: housebreaker, ultimately from Latin burgus, a fortified dwelling)
• -ary (noun suffix denoting the act)