Dictionary

imbrue en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ɪmˈbɹuː/

Etymology

From Middle English embrewen, from Old French *embrever (whence Middle French embreuver), metathetic variant of embevrer (“to imbibe, steep, penetrate, soak”) (with same stem variation found in French abreuver and beuverie), from Vulgar Latin imbiberāre.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To stain [with in or with ‘blood, slaughter, etc.’].
   • At other times, I thought, What if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow! 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter II, in Great Expectations […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 23:
   • My hands were imbrued in his blood.
   • Armed with the weapon which was destined to destroy himself, Imnaz sprang down the ladder, — found the door, and, emerging from the abode of crime, sought a more secure resting place, leaving his hostess to discover, with return of day, in whose blood were imbrued the hands of an hospiticide. 1837, Edward Smallwood, Manuella, the Executioner’s Daughter ; A Story of Madrid, volume II, Richard Bentley, pages 275–276:
   • "I've been sacrificing so to strange gods that I feel I want to put on record, somehow, my fidelity—fundamentally unchanged, after all—to our own. I feel as if my hands were embrued with the blood of monstrous alien altars—of another faith altogether. 1903 September 28, Henry James, The Ambassadors, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC:

Forms

Deriveds

imbruement

Translations (2)

bg омокрям със (to stain) · bg опетнявам (to stain)