Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
bury (v.), buried (adj.), -bury (suffix)
The verb, meaning “to inter,” “to hide away,” and the like, rhymes with ferry, not with furry. The adjective rhymes with harried or ferried; hurried as a rhyme for it is Nonstandard and probably dialectal. The suffix -bury (in place names it is a variant of -burgh) sometimes rhymes with berry, especially in the United States, but in British English and occasionally in the United States the usual pronunciation either rhymes with curry or assimilates the suffix’s first syllable entirely, as in Sudbury (SUHD-buhr-ee or SUHD-bree). The idiom with the verb, bury the hatchet, meaning “agree to stop fighting,” is Standard and a cliché.
