Word of the Day Archive
Friday February 17, 2006
imbue \im-BYOO\
, transitive verb:
1. To tinge or dye deeply; to cause to absorb thoroughly; as, "clothes thoroughly imbued with black."
2. To instill profoundly; to cause to become impressed or penetrated.
Beauty is equal parts flesh and imagination: we imbue it with our dreams, saturate it with our longings.
-- Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest
Along with the rest of us he would certainly applaud attempts to imbue the young with the spirit of fair play.
-- John Bryant, "Football should heed the Corinthian spirit", Times (London), February 17, 2000
He wanted to remake American cinema into a positive force for good, to imbue it with a transcendent sense of virtue and order.
-- Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood
Imbue comes from Latin imbuere, "to wet, to steep, to saturate."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for imbue
