Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To bind with or as if with chains.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To chain; fasten with a chain; bind or hold in or as if in chains; hold in bondage; enthrall.
- To hold fast; restrain; confine: as, to enchain the attention.
- To link together; connect.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To bind with a chain; to hold in chains.
- v. To hold fast; to confine.
- v. To link together; to connect.
WordNet 3.0
- v. restrain or bind with chains
Examples
“enchain' a rational conversation, but nothing could I get out of him but rhapsodies about you in the frightfullest English that I ever heard out of a human head!”
“Yet man can enchain elephants and employ them, according to their own wishes. ”
“But to dismiss it as unnatural is to forbid it, drive it even further underground, and enchain the world as the perpetually dangerous place that George F. Will and his "realistic" reactionary cohorts suppose it to be.”
“This was all posted last evening at bloggerspot, buzznet had the chikungunya flu, but it recovered and that is the magic of haldane, gives you pleasure and also pain .. and our balls to buzznet enchain. .it pours love when it acid rains. .multi colored light and blood stained window panes .. posted 11 oct 2006”
“Whilst hand with hand and arm with arm about their necks enchain”
“Ideal more credible than the Actual: to enchain our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets, our tears, for a mere brain-born”
“But though the books were never so interesting, and never so full of novelty to Tom, they could not so enchain him, in those mysterious chambers, as to render him unconscious, for a moment, of the lightest sound.”
“On the other hand, in the nation at large there was growing up a feeling that at the top there were a set of giants — Titans — who, without heart or soul, and without any understanding of or sympathy with the condition of the rank and file, were setting forth to enchain and enslave them.”
“Thus man, the giant who now held her in captivity, would shrink to the diminutiveness of a fairy; and she would experience, that his utmost force was unable to enchain her soul, or compel her to fear him, while he was destitute of virtue.”
“I never can touch her hand, or a ringlet of her head, or a ribbon of her dress, but I will make privileges for myself: every feature of her face, her bright eyes, her lips, shall go through each change they know, for my pleasure: display each exquisite variety of glance and curve, to delight - thrill - perhaps, more hopelessly to enchain me.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘enchain’.
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Former ghosts
Ghost words that I've adopted because the original listers abandoned them. Yarb has more in his Adoption agency, and many orphlings are tagged as ghosted, ghost phrases, misspellings, or typos.
orphling, listkeeper, grandmotherly, scroogish, theocon, frownie, afternoons, loggin, supercalliwhat, avunculate, kokako, stygimolochs and 379 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for enchain.
qroqqa With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.
—Johnson, preface to his Dictionary
Chiquitita, tell me what's wrong
You're enchained by your own sorrow
—ABBA Oct 24, 2008