imbrue

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old French embruer, from Germanic.

Pronunciation[edit]

Verb[edit]

imbrue (third-person singular simple present imbrues, present participle imbruing, simple past and past participle imbrued)

  1. To stain (in, with, blood, slaughter, etc.).
    • 1837, Edward Smallwood, Manuella, the Executioner’s Daughter ; A Story of Madrid, volume II, Richard Bentley, pages 275–276:
      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.
    • 1903, Henry James, The Ambassadors[1]:
      "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.

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