disinter

present singular third person disinters · participle present disinterring · participle past disinterred · past disinterred

1. transitiveTo take out of the grave or tomb.

   Synonyms: unbury, exhume, dig up · Antonyms: inter

2. figurativelytransitiveTo bring out, as from a grave or hiding place; to bring from obscurity into view.

   Why disinter dead faith from mouldering hidden?

   1870, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

   2 more examples

   At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their pockets inside out; lockfast drawers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of gray ashes, as though many papers had been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt end of a green cheque book, which had resisted the action of the fire; […]

   1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Carew Murder Case”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 42

   In his lectures he is equally wide-ranging and allusive, making strange links and analogies between apparently unrelated texts and ideas, and disinterring etymologies which writers cannot have been aware of.

   2001 May 12, Robert Potts, “The poet at play”, in The Guardian, →ISSN