bʰergh-
“to protect, preserve, hide”Source of English bury, barrow, borough, burglar
Root meaning to protect or conceal, producing English bury, borough, burglar, iceberg.
Discussion
The Proto-Indo-European root *bʰergh- meant "to protect, to hide, to preserve" and produced an important family of words in the Germanic languages relating to shelter, fortification, and concealment. The root captures the fundamental human need for security — the act of placing something (or someone) out of harm's way.
In Germanic, the initial aspirated voiced stop *bʰ became *b, and the aspirated *gʰ became *g. The root produced Old English beorgan "to protect, to shelter" and byrgan "to bury" — modern English bury. The original sense of burying was not primarily interment of the dead but rather hiding or protecting something by placing it in the earth, as one might bury treasure. The connection between protection and burial is preserved in the word barrow (a burial mound, a place of protection for the dead).
The word borough (and its variants burg, burgh, -bury as in Canterbury) also descends from this root, denoting a fortified settlement — a place of protection. German Burg "castle, fortress", Hamburg, Edinburgh, and dozens of other European place names preserve this sense. The word burglar likewise derives from this root, originally meaning one who breaks into a burg — a violator of the protected space.
Old English also gave us harbour (a protected anchorage, from *here-beorg "army shelter") and harbinger (originally one who goes ahead to arrange harbour). The word belfry, surprisingly, is not related to "bell" but rather descends from a Germanic compound meaning "a protective tower".
Outside Germanic, the root appears in Slavic (Russian berech' "to guard, to protect") and possibly in other branches, though the distribution is debated.
The semantic cluster of bury, borough, burglar, and harbour reveals a coherent conceptual world: the fort protects its inhabitants, treasures are buried for safekeeping, and the harbour shelters ships. When a burglar breaks in, the violation is not merely of property but of the ancient principle of protected space.