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/bərk/ Listen

verb

Burke v. t. (past & past part. burked; pres. part. burking)

To murder by suffocation, or so as to produce few marks of violence, for the purpose of obtaining a body to be sold for dissection.

To dispose of quietly or indirectly; to suppress; to smother; to shelve; as, to burke a parliamentary question. "The court could not burke an inquiry, supported by such a mass of a affidavits."

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Etymology of 'Burke'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Burke" Quotes from Famous Books

... principles,—that of primogeniture as between son and son, and of hereditary succession as between a son and every other pretender. Well may we hail the principle of hereditary right as realizing the praise of Burke applied to chivalry, viz., that it is "the cheap defence of nations;" for the security which is thus obtained, be it recollected, does not regard a small succession of princes, but the whole rights and interests of social man: since the contests for the rights of belligerent rivals do not respect ...

— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... homage of more than half a century has assigned to Edmund Burke a lofty pre-eminence in the aristocracy of mind, and we may justly assume succeeding ages will confirm the judgment which the Past has thus pronounced. His biographical history is so popularly known, that it is almost superfluous to record it in this brief introduction. It may, however, be ...

— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. With an introductory Discourse concerning Taste. Edited by A. MILLS. ...

— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... one who thinks that power—whether a Monopoly, a Balance, or even a Community of Power is the ultimate guardian angel of our peace, has the root of the matter in him. Men, said Burke, are not governed primarily by laws, still less by force; and behind all power stands opinion. To believe in public opinion rather than in might excludes the believer from the regular forces of militarism and condemns him as a visionary and blind. For advocates of the Balance of Power ...

— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... saw much in the little towns of the Pale, or gray Dublin, with the Parliament where Grattan spoke now a money-changer's business house, and the bulk of Trinity of Goldsmith and Burke—or the great wide streets where four-in-hands used to go. And Three-Rock Mountain. And Bray. And the beauty of the Boyne Valley. And the little safe harbors of the South. And the mountains of Kerry. And all the kingdom of Connacht. And the great winds ...

— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

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