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Definition
a pile of wood or other burnable material — especially to burn a dead body as in a funeral rite- While cremation is not uncommon in the western world, open air funeral pyres are typically illegal.
pyres = piles of wood or other burnable materials
- In 1829 India banned the Hindu custom of a widow's suicide on her husband's funeral pyre.
- As the chains were wound over their body at the stake, and a flame set to the pyre,Ayn Rand -- Anthem
- There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up.Ray Bradbury -- Fahrenheit 451
- The pyre can be seen for miles, if there are any eyes to see it.Rick Yancey -- The Infinite Sea
- Pile them all onto a great pyre and beg my forgiveness!Henry H. Neff -- The Maelstrom
- Jocelyn had her head turned aside, away from the burning pyre.Cassandra Clare -- City of Glass
- In an instant the whole creature was in flames, a prancing, writhing pyre on the snow.Stephen King -- The Shining
- Or, according to another tradition, at the shore he immolated himself upon a funeral pyre, and birds with multi-colored feathers arose from his ashes.Joseph Campbell -- The Hero With a Thousand Faces
- Then laved with lustral waves the mangled corse, Laid it on fresh-lopped branches, lit a pyre, And to his memory piled a mighty mound Of mother earth.Sophocles -- Antigone
- When a man died, his mount was killed and placed beneath him on the funeral pyre, to carry him to the night lands.George R.R. Martin -- A Game of Thrones
- It caught at once; long tongues of orange fire licked rapidly across the pyre.Stephenie Meyer -- Eclipse
- At the base of the pyre stood the crib—hewn with such love and joyful expectation—that the Livesedge child had died in.Geraldine Brooks -- Year of Wonders
- I've been thinking we might make the brushwood into a pyre and burn his body—and those other things.H.G. Wells -- The Island of Dr. Moreau
- When they were gone, the albino came out, pulled the cups from the corpse, decided to burn the body on the garbage pyre back behind the castle.William Goldman -- The Princess Bride
- If Francisco had wanted a worthy funeral pyre for d'Anconia Copper, she thought, he —had succeeded.Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged
- A few miles to the south, a swirling pyre of flames and black smoke was all that remained of the Zhang family mansion.Rick Riordan -- The Son of Neptune
- It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres.Herman Melville -- Moby Dick
- He wept as he told us that he literally had to reach down into the graves, lift out and carry the decomposing bodies to the burning pyres.Leon Leyson -- The Boy on the Wooden Box
- And I found the remains of my father in the funeral pyre.Frank Herbert -- Dune
pyre = piles of wood or other burnable materials
pyre = stacked wood (to burn a body)
pyre = a pile of wood
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