Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To inspire or influence thoroughly; pervade: work imbued with the revolutionary spirit. See Synonyms at charge.
- v. To permeate or saturate.
- v. To stain or dye deeply.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To impregnate by steeping or soaking: used especially with reference to dyes.
- To tincture deeply; cause to become impregnated or penetrated: as, to imbue the minds of youth with good principles.
Wiktionary
- v. : To wet or stain an object completely with some physical quality.
- v. In general, to act in a way which results in an object becoming completely permeated or impregnated by some quality.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To tinge deeply; to dye; to cause to absorb.
- v. To tincture deply; to cause to become impressed or penetrated.
WordNet 3.0
- v. suffuse with color
- v. spread or diffuse through
- v. fill, soak, or imbue totally
Etymologies
- Middle English enbuen, imbeuen, from Latin imbuere, to moisten, stain.
Examples
“The animal terms imbue the loved one with the characteristics humans ascribe to each animal.”
“Since when do mysterious rifts "imbue" magical abilities?”
“Sitting on the pitch and abandoning your teammates is not the action of a winner, that's not how you 'imbue' a winning culture.”
“Her tone is more silver than gold, but she knows how to subtly imbue a phrase with feeling, when to color the violin sound to reflect changes in the character of a piece, and when to simply let the music speak for itself.”
“But if Montgomerie can imbue his 12 players with the focused serenity that settled over him whenever he pulled out a club on Europe's behalf, Celtic Manor could become the scene of the triumph that seals his legend.”
The Guardian: Cometh the Ryder Cup moment, cometh captain Colin Montgomerie
“People had become terribly troubled," he said, trying hard to imbue the word "troubled" with sympathy.”
The Guardian: Rewind radio: The Brown Years; Desert Island Discs; Craig Brown's Lost Diaries
“Like the great universities, Oaksterdam seeks to imbue its students with a vision of the world and the zeal to go forth and change it.”
“Smith describes Mapplethorpe's art thus: "Robert took areas of dark human consent and made them into art... sought to elevate aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism.”
“But all I can hope is that my writing is strong enough to imbue each new set of characters with enough specialness to win over new and established readers, and to make some of those readers care about the overarching plot too.”
“Adherence to theories of how our world and various systems in it work may imbue the worldscape with a sense of authenticity.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘imbue’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Words in which "u" is pronounced "yu"
cute, uniform, puny, municipal, butte, fume, perfume, puke, cucumber, huge, demure, cube and 56 more...
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words I learned from Firefly
Joss Whedon knows no shame
fancible, foufaraw, frippery, corpsified, shindig, rutting, creepifying, gorram, ironical, sanguine, pantywaist ijit, whinge and 24 more...
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Strengthen
reinforce, stiffen, harden, braze, imbue, fortify, dig in, armor
oroboros Cf. instill Sep 25, 2010