• burglar •
Pronunciation: bêrg-lêr • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A thief who enters a building with the intent of stealing something.
Notes: This noun comes with two verbs: burgle and burglarize. The former was the result of mistaking the AR on the end of the noun for the suffix -er, and back-forming burgle by removing the presumed suffix. The noun itself is sometimes used as a verb. The abstract noun for the profession of a burglar is burglary.
In Play: Houses of the wealthy are the usual targets of burglars: "Since he kept valuable art works in his house, Warren took every measure to make it burglar-proof." There is no excuse for burglary: "When Robin House was arrested for breaking and entering, he told the police that he wasn't a burglar, he was just training the police."
Word History: Today's Good Word was taken from Medieval Latin burglator "burglar", from burgare "to burglarize", based on Classical Latin burgus "castle, fortress", which turned up in English as the combining form -burg (as in Lewisburg) and borough. Burgus descended from PIE bhergh-/bhorgh- "high, mountain", source also of Sanskrit barhayati "increases", Latin fortis "strong, powerful", Greek pyrgos "tower, castle", Persian bar "height", Armenian berj "height", Serbian breg "hill", Russian bereg "(river) bank, shore", Welsh bre "hill", German Berg "mountain", and Danish bjerg "mountain". The spare L in burglator resulted from compounding burg(us) + latro "robber, bandit". All we need is liquid metathesis of the last two letters. (Now let's recognize active Agoran Eileen Opiolka for spotting the interest in today's fascinatingly bad Good Word and sharing it with us.)
