Funeralize

[Damien Hall]

Spotted last night in an obituary:

'He was funeralized February 26, 2008, at Resurrection Baptist Church [...]'

(_Westside Weekly_ (Philadelphia, PA, USA), 7-13 March 2008, p8)

This clearly means 'his funeral was held', 'he was given a funeral';  it was a
new one on me and didn't appear (in this sense) in either of the dictionaries I
was able to consult:

- _OED_ online has a citation from 1654 for _funeralize_ meaning 'render sad or
melancholy';  this is the only citation and the word is marked 'obscure'.
- The word didn't feature in _MW Online_ or in the _MW Collegiate_ (which may,
for all I know, contain the same data!).
- The _MW_ website said that there was an entry for _funeralize_ in the
unabridged version at merriam-websterunabridged.com, but neither I nor my U.
library has a subscription to that.

A new one for the _OED_, or a nonce-word?  Has anyone else come across it?  This
citation is from the free local paper of the area where I live in West
Philadelphia, which is 99% African-American;  does that have any bearing?

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

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