"funeralize"?

[TeeYiYi]

26. I woke up this morning...

...still pondering "funeralize" and feeling less confident about its legitimacy. (Damn you, CTyankee.)

The struggle came down to the fact that no matter what definition of "funeral" I used to try to justify it, I couldn't get away from the fact that a funeral is still a ceremony; a ritual.

In an attempt to create a rule for it, I started again with "funeral" synonyms: burial, entombment, interment - the ritual placing of a corpse in a grave. Here's how it went:

If a funeral can be defined as, or pertaining to the ritual placing of a corpse in the ground, then you could say that there is a need to funeralize a corpse; cause a burial to happen. Since a corpse is a person, albeit a dead person, then you could say, once buried, that a person has been funeralized.

If a person can be crystallized, i.e, Lot's wife, then, a dead person should be able to be funeralized.

I'm still not there; not quite comfortable yet... (All this stretching is wearing me out.) I'll give it one more shot:

I keep coming back to a funeral being a ritual. I'm not sure a person can be ritualized. If a person can be said to have completed a particular rite of passage, can it be said that the person has been ritualized?

According to the definition of "ritualize," the answer is yes. (See below: 3. impose ritualism upon)

ritualize
[rich-oo-uh-lahyz]

verb (used without object), ritualized, ritualizing.
1.
to practice ritualism.
verb (used with object), ritualized, ritualizing.
2.
to make into a ritual :
to ritualize the serving of tea.
3.
to convert (someone) to ritualism; impose ritualism upon.

So, there it is. If a person, who has had a ritual imposed upon them, can be said to have been ritualized, then a person who has had a funeral imposed upon them can be said to have been funeralized.

The etymology of "funeralize" makes more sense if you allow for early European translations, both singular and plural, of the Latin root word, "funus." The word, "funeralize," could have origins in multiple countries across Europe, e.g., England, France, Spain, Portugal; brought to America and passed down through the generations.

Thanks again, CTyankee. This time, I really am done; even if I'm wrong. FIN

TYY