Dictionary

befringe en · VERB

Etymology

From be- (“on, at, upon”) + fringe.

Meanings

1. To furnish or adorn with a fringe.
   • [...] women themselves went in armour, (having a brave lasse like another Penthesilea for their leader, so befringed with gold, that they called her Golden-foot) riding astride like men [...] 1639, Thomas Fuller, chapter 27, in The Historie of the Holy Warre, Cambridge, page 78:
   • […] during a year or more, Gentleman Brown’s ship was to be seen, for many days on end, hovering off an islet befringed with green upon azure, with the dark dot of the mission-house on a white beach […] 1900, Joseph Conrad, chapter 41, in Lord Jim, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, page 415:
   • 1823, Lord Byron, Don Juan: Cantos IX.—X.—XI., London: John Hunt, Canto 10, stanza 29, p. 32, … each dress he sported, Which set the beauty off in which he glowed, As purple clouds befringe the sun …
   • And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves (Like Journals, Odes, and such forgotten things As Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of Kings) Cloath spice, line trunks, or flutt’ring in a row, Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Sohoe. 1737, Alexander Pope, The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated, London: T. Cooper, page 23:

Forms