The Collaborative International Dictionary
Burke \Burke\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Burked; p. pr. & vb. n. Burking.] [From one Burke of Edinburgh, who committed the crime in 1829.]
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.
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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.
--C. Reade.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of burke English)
Usage examples of "burking".
And you go humbly after him To a mean suburban lodging: on the way To what or where Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: And you--how should you care So long as, unreclaimed of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down To the black job of burking London Town?
And all connoisseurs of the art are agreed that the burking of de l'Abattoir and company was a masterpiece, a masterpiece—not alone in the extreme elongation of the several throats, but in the delicacy of detail.