imbed

English

Verb

imbed (third-person singular simple present imbeds, present participle imbedding, simple past and past participle imbedded)

1. Alternative spelling of embed
   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIV, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 313:

     The curse of the steam-boat is upon the lovely river; but some of the villas, imbedded in their own old trees—surrounded by turf the fairy queen might tread—girdled with every variety of flowery shrub—I do not quite say I could spend the whole day there, but I could have a luxurious breakfast—one ought to indulge in natural tastes of a morning.

   • 1851, Thomas Carlyle, “Coleridge”, in The Life of John Sterling, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, part I, page 78:

     To the man himself [Samuel Taylor Coleridge] Nature had given, in high measure, the seeds of a noble endowment; […] but imbedded in such weak laxity of character, in such indolences and esuriences as had made strange work with it.

   • 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 155:

     A piece of marigold or bay leaf was imbedded in the metal, and over it a carbuncle or chrysolite was placed.

Anagrams

• bedim

Old Irish

Alternative forms

• imbad

Etymology

Uncertain. May be cognate with Old Welsh immet, but both the reading and the meaning of that term are uncertain. If the Proto-Celtic term was *ɸembetom, then it might be cognate with Latin pinguis (“fat”) and/or Hittite 𒉺𒀭𒆪𒍑 (pa-an-ku-uš /⁠pankuš⁠/, “all, entire”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈimʲbʲeð/

Noun

imbed n (genitive imbid)

1. a large quantity, a large number, abundance, excess; especially an abundance of wealth, riches, food
   • c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 62^b20

     a n-imbed són ind slóig do·lega na ní téte, fo chosmailius dílenn

     the abundance of the army which destroys whatever it comes to, like a deluge

2. (law, in the dual number) the two parties to a suit, contract, etc.
3. amount, number

Inflection

Neuter o-stem
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	imbedN	imbedN	imbedL, imbeda
Vocative	imbedN	imbedN	imbedL, imbeda
Accusative	imbedN	imbedN	imbedL, imbeda
Genitive	imbidL	imbed	imbedN
Dative	imbiudL, imbud	imbedaib	imbedaib
Initial mutations of a following adjective: H = triggers aspiration L = triggers lenition N = triggers nasalization

Descendants

• Irish: iomad
• Scottish Gaelic: iomadh

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
imbed	unchanged	n-imbed
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Further reading

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “imbed, imbad”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language