Dictionary

embracement en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English embracement, enbracement, from Old French embrassement; equivalent to embrace + -ment.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Synonym of embrace, variously ▸ An act of encircling another with one's arms and pulling them to one's chest, a hug.
   • What was that but a kinde, tender, and fatherly farwell which he tooke of his children? representing the last adiewes, and parting imbracements [translating embrassemens], which at our death we give unto our dearest issues? 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 8, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
   • 1932, Aldous Huxley, London: Chatto & Windus, Chapter 11, Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.
   • Kinde wordes, and mutuall talke, makes our greefe greater. Therefore with dum imbracement let vs part, 1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
2. (countable, figuratively, uncountable) Synonym of embrace, variously ▸ The state of embracing, inclusion.
   • The question of flies—using that, to a woodsman, eminently connotive word in its wide embracement of mosquitoes, sand-flies, deer-flies, black flies, and midges—is one much mooted in the craft. 1903, Stewart Edward White, chapter 9, in The Forest, New York: The Outlook Company, page 105:
3. (countable, figuratively, uncountable) Synonym of embrace, variously ▸ An act of embracing, full acceptance.
   • "I think the embracement of AI is going to be one of the great divides of our generation," she continued, saying that as a lifelong San Franciscan, she is already seeing the impacts of that divide. "When I find out someone is working in AI, I judge their character completely..." 2026 July 1, Grace McCarty, "'It's Like Having a Dumb Friend': Young San Franciscans Hate AI", SFGate
   • 1994, Robert Alun Jones, Durkheim’s Imperative: “The Role of Humanities Faculty in the Information Technologies Revolution” in Brett Sutton (editor), Literary Texts in an Electronic Age: Scholarly Implications and Library Services, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, p. 175, […] I believe that it is this moral dimension of the division of intellectual labor that leads many of us to feel discomfort as we survey the detritus of our traditional roles, the havoc provoked by our attraction to and embracement of these powerful technologies.
   • His embracement of Popery beginning to make a noise, he decoyed several of the most eminent Protestant clergymen in France to give assurances of the contrary. 1784, John Brown, A Compendious History of the British Churches in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, Glasgow, page 241:
   • […] what Destiny has ordered I am resolved with an adventerous Resolution to subscribe to, and with a contented imbracement enjoy it. 1666, George Alsop, “To my Brother”, in A Character of the Province of Mary-Land, London: Peter Dring, page 85:
4. (countable, figuratively, uncountable) Synonym of embrace, variously ▸ An enclosure.
   • The Heath itself when they came to it was a white wilderness within the embracement of black rocks and mountains. 1904, Hall Caine, The Prodigal Son, London: Heinemann, Part 6, Chapter 8, p. 353:
   • […] the Sun […] of himself, ever shineth and seeth all things, if his Beams be not stopt with a Cloud or some other thick imbracement […] 1664, John Heydon, Theomagia, London: Henry Brome, Book III, p. 153:

Forms