Faith & RitualGreek → English
Pyre
/ˈpaɪər/noun
A heap of wood built for burning a body.
The Greek roots
πυρά
pyrá
funeral pile, hearth
πῦρ
pŷr
fire
Literally: “fire-place”
The story of the word
πυρά is simply the collective of πῦρ, fire, meaning the place where fire is made. The Iliad ends with one, the twelve-day truce for Hector's funeral, and Homer's audience would have understood the size of the woodpile as a measure of the honour. πῦρ is a distant cousin of English fire itself, both from the same Indo-European root, so pyre and fire meet again after several thousand years apart.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
pyromaniapyriteempyreanantipyretic
In a sentence
They built the pyre on the shore and lit it at dusk.