imbrue

From Middle English embrewen, from Old French *embrever (whence Middle French embreuver), metathetic variant of embevrer (“to imbibe, steep, penetrate, soak”) (with same stem variation found in French abreuver and beuverie), from Vulgar Latin imbiberāre.

• IPA^(key): /ɪmˈbɹuː/

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• Rhymes: -uː

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

1. (transitive) To stain [with in or with ‘blood, slaughter, etc.’].

   My hands were imbrued in his blood.

   • 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.

   • 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter II, in Great Expectations […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 23:

     At other times, I thought, What if the young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow!

   • 1903 September 28, Henry James, The Ambassadors, London: Methuen & Co. […], →OCLC:

     "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.

• embrue

• erbium, imbuer