Interment is burial — placing a body in the ground. Internment is confining people without trial, typically during wartime. A single n separates them and the meanings could hardly be further apart, which makes the swap especially unfortunate in obituaries and history writing.
The core difference
Two words, one letter, no shared meaning.
- interment — burial: the interment took place on Friday.
- internment — detention without trial: wartime internment camps.
The roots
Inter is from Latin in terra, into the earth — to bury. Intern as a verb comes from internus, internal, via the sense of confining someone within a territory. Different roots that happen to converge in spelling.
Why it matters
Both words appear in historical writing about the same periods, so context does not always rescue a slip. Writing that a community faced "interment" during the war says something very different from "internment" — and only one of them is what happened.
Frequently asked questions
Which word means burial?
Interment, with one n. Internment means detention without trial.
How do I remember it?
Inter means to place in the earth — in terra. The extra n in internment goes with intern, to confine.
Is disinterment a word?
Yes — the removal of a body from a grave, the opposite of interment.