-bury
suffix ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A placename suffix indicating a fortified place. morpheme
"Some of these hilltops – Sidbury, Quarley, Danebury and Woolbury – were later, in the sixth and fifth centuries, appropriated for the building of hillforts."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Some of these hilltops – Sidbury, Quarley, Danebury and Woolbury – were later, in the sixth and fifth centuries, appropriated for the building of hillforts."
Etymology
From Old English byriġ, the dative case of burg (“fortified place”) (whence borough); doublet of -borough and -burg. Due to the collapse of the case system between Old and Middle English, many placenames retain a fossilized dative form, as places would most commonly have been invoked in the dative (after a preposition in, at, to etc.).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.