burke: [19] In present-day English burke means ‘avoid’, as in ‘burke an issue’, but it can be traced back semantically via ‘suppress, hush up’ to ‘suffocate so as to provide a body for surgical dissection’. In this sense it was a macabre adoption of the name of William Burke (1792– 1829), an Irishman who with his colleague William Hare set up a profitable but nefarious business in early 19th-century Edinburgh providing cadavers for surgeons to dissect.
To begin with they obtained their supplies by robbing graves, but eventually, in order to get higher-quality material, they took to murdering people, generally by suffocation or strangling. Burke was executed.
Burke (v.)
family name (first recorded 1066), from Anglo-Norman pronunciation of Old English burgh. Not common in England itself, but it took root in Ireland, where William de Burgo went in 1171 with Henry II and later became Earl of Ulster. As shorthand for a royalty reference book, it represents "A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the United Kingdom," first issued 1826, compiled by John Burke (1787-1848). As a verb meaning "murder by smothering," it is abstracted from William Burk, executed in Edinburgh 1829 for murdering several persons to sell their bodies for dissection.
实用例句
1. Burke cast a cursory glance at the menu, then flapped it shut.
伯克匆匆地瞥了一眼菜单，然后啪地合上了。
来自柯林斯例句
2. Burke's sentiments undoubtedly struck a responsive chord in Parliament.
伯克的观点无疑引起了议会的积极回应。
来自柯林斯例句
3. Mr Burke, pleading poverty, changed his mind.
伯克先生以自己穷为由改变了主意。
来自柯林斯例句
4. Burke later admitted he had lied.
伯克后来承认自己撒了谎。
来自柯林斯例句
5. Burke was asleep, sprawled obliviously against the window.