ambass

English

Etymology

Irregular back-formation from ambassador.

Verb

ambass (third-person singular simple present ambasses, present participle ambassing, simple past and past participle ambassed)

1. (humorous, nonstandard) To engage in the professional work of an ambassador.
   • 1913, John Kendrick Bangs, "To Marse Tom and Meh Lady", The Bookman, Volume XXXVIII, page 114:

     How fruitless attempts to involve us in war With HIM to AMBASS and with HER to ADOR.

   • 1917, John Kendrick Bangs, Half hours with the Idiot, Little, Brown, and Company, page 4:

     The home of an American Ambassador should express America not the country to which he is sent to Ambass.

   • 1914,, Association men, Volume 39, YMCA of the USA, page 361

     Politics, graft, war, sport and scandal are aired in turn, but the "ambassador" fails to ambass — the "worker" fails to work — the "messenger" makes a mess of it.

   • 1961, Ilka Chase, The Carthaginian rose, Doubleday, page 51:

     ... cut off from their governments and obliged to rely on their own wisdom, knowledge and experience, when they had, in a word, to ambass. Nowadays they pick up the phone and the State Department, for better or worse, tells then what to do.

   • 1995, Will Rogers, Will Rogers speaks‎^[1], →ISBN, page 21:

     I have always maintained there was something wrong with Ambassadors, as none of them seemed to ambass properly.

   • 2001, Peter David, The Rift (2001) (Star Trek: The Original Series Book 57), Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 161

     "Therefore," said Kirk, […] "Shipping her back in box is not one of the options, […] this will require the skills of an Ambassador. So you're going to have to […] Ambass."

Translations

to engage in the professional work of an ambassador

• Portuguese: embaixar

Anagrams

• sambas