IMBUE

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ITALIANO - FRANCÉS - ESPAÑOL

imbue

Transitive verb

Indicative past, past participle: imbued. Present participle: imbuing

Etymology: from Latin imbuere (=to imbue, wet, moisten, tinge, stain, imbrue). Imbuere is compounded by in- and buere. It is etymologically identical to Spanish imbuir.

English word derived from imbue: imbuement.

1. To affect (a substance) with some moisture; to make moist or humid; to saturate; wet thoroughly; to cause to become porously penetrated by a liquid, a vapour or other substance emanated.

Synonyms: to soak, drench, bedrench, steep, sodden, sop, temper

Antonyms: dry, desiccate

Approximate equivalents: tremper, mouiller, in French; imbevere, in Italian; impregnar, in Spanish.

When the food has been sufficiently masticated and imbued with saliva, it is collected by the action of the cheeks and tongue upon the surface of the last organ. Robley Dunglison (Human Physiology)

As a bit of waste paper, which is composed of filaments connected together, being once imbued with water or with oil, will not suffer any other liquor to pass through it, but such as it was saturated with before. Richard Joseph Sullivan (A View of Nature)

Chalky soils, which are so notorious for injuring the fleece, are supposed to act in a corrosive manner, but the correct explanation is not, that the chalky particles attack the fibre in a direct manner, but that they render it brittle by absorbing the oily moisture with which it is naturally imbued. The Farmer’s Magazine

Some cooks steep the meat in the wine and other seasonings for a night, or for some hours previous to baking. This, no doubt, imbues the venison with the flavour of the seasonings, but at the same time drains off the juices, and hurts the natural flavour of the meat, so that we would rather discountenance the practice. C. Isobel Johnstone (The Cook and Housewife’s Manual)

2. To dye, tinge by imbuing.

[Clothes] which have once been thoroughly imbued with black, cannot well afterwards be dyed into lighter color. Robert Boyle (Philosophical Works)

3. Metaphorically: to affect (something or someone) with something incorporeal as if by imbuing. Approximate equivalents: imbuir, in Spanish; être imbu de, in French; impregnare, in Italian.

"It is we who are in your debt for a lovely romance, my dear Sir Willoughby," said Lady Busshe, incapable of taking a correction, so thoroughly had he imbued her with his fiction, or with the belief that she had a good story to circulate. George Meredith (The Egoist)

I became imbued with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what means. Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)