enrank

English

Etymology

en- +‎ rank

Verb

enrank (third-person singular simple present enranks, present participle enranking, simple past and past participle enranked)

1. (obsolete) To place in ranks or in order.
   • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     No leisure had he to enrank his men;
     He wanted pikes to set before his archers;
     Instead whereof sharp stakes pluck’d out of hedges
     They pitched in the ground confusedly,
     To keep the horsemen off from breaking in.

   • 1624, William Camden, The Historie of the Life and Death of Mary Stuart Queene of Scotland, London: Richard Whitaker, Anno 1568, p. 46,^[1]

     When I had againe forgiuen them, behold, they laid vpon me a new crime, which themselues had wrought, and signed with their owne hands; and shortly after were enranked in battell against me in the field […]

2. (figurative, obsolete) To classify (someone in a particular group); to enroll, register.
   • 1609, Simon Grahame, The Anatomie of Humors, Edinburgh, p. 19,^[2]

     […] thy Lord or Maister enranks thee with the deceaved sort, and so forgets thee!

   • 1610, John Healey (translator), St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God, London, p. 585,^[3]

     […] hee begat the sonne who is enranked in this genealogicall rolle.

   • 1630, William Vaughan, The Arraignment of Slander Perjury Blasphemy, and other Malicious Sinnes, London: Francis Constable, Lineament 16, p. 174,^[4]

     Courteous countrey-men, vnderstanding spirits, whose hap it is to be enrankt into impanelles […]

Anagrams

• Kernan, ranken