imprecate
English
Etymology
From Latin imprecari (“to invoke (good or evil) upon, pray to, call upon”), from in (“upon”) + precari (“to pray”).
Pronunciation
Verb
imprecate (third-person singular simple present imprecates, present participle imprecating, simple past and past participle imprecated)
- (transitive) To call down by prayer, as something hurtful or calamitous.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 119”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething sea; [...]
Related terms
Translations
to call down by prayer
to invoke evil upon
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Further reading
- “imprecate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “imprecate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “imprecate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Italian
Etymology 1
Verb
imprecate
- inflection of imprecare:
Etymology 2
Participle
imprecate f pl
Anagrams
Latin
Participle
(deprecated template usage) imprecāte
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *preḱ-
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- English terms with quotations
- Italian non-lemma forms
- Italian verb forms
- Italian past participle forms
- Latin non-lemma forms
- Latin participle forms