Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cause to grow pale.
  • etc. See impale, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb obsolete To make pale.
  • transitive verb To fence or fortify with stakes; to surround with a line of stakes for defense; to impale.
  • transitive verb To inclose; to surround. See Impale.
  • transitive verb To put to death by thrusting a sharpened stake through the body.
  • transitive verb (Her.) Same as Impale.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Obsolete form of impale.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb pierce with a sharp stake or point

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • So was the mystery of iniquity consummated; for whereas the pope, to secure his new acquisitions, endeavoured to empale the title and privileges of the catholic church unto those Christians which professed obedience unto himself, unto an exclusion of a greater number, there ensued such a confusion of the catholic and a particular church, as that both of them were almost utterly lost.

    A Discourse concerning Evangelical Love, Church Peace, and Unity 1616-1683 1965

  • They empale their prey on locust thorns and on the spines of other trees and bushes; and I have known a barbed-wire fence to be decorated with the remains of their victims.

    X. Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi 1916

  • "Well, it wasn't right for her to say it," said Anne, promptly deciding upon which horn of this dilemma to empale herself.

    Anne of the Island 1908

  • The commission to Moses, "to extirpate the Canaanitish tribes," has been the universal war-cry of the dominant party in the Church to burn and empale heretics.

    Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 James Richardson 1828

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