embay

English

Etymology 1

From em- +‎ bay (“bathe”).

Verb

embay (third-person singular simple present embays, present participle embaying, simple past and past participle embayed)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To bathe; to steep.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 560:

     Sweete Loue, that doth his golding wings embay / In bleſſed Nectar, and pure Pleaſures well […].

   • 1600, [Torquato Tasso], “The Twelfth Booke of Godfrey of Bulloigne”, in Edward Fairefax [i.e., Edward Fairfax], transl., Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem. […], London: […] Ar[nold] Hatfield, for I[saac] Iaggard and M[atthew] Lownes, →OCLC, stanza 62, page 225:

     Their ſwords both points and edges ſharpe embay / In purple bloud, where ſo they hit or light […]

Etymology 2

From em- +‎ bay.

Alternative forms

• imbay

Verb

embay (third-person singular simple present embays, present participle embaying, simple past and past participle embayed)

1. (transitive) To shut in, enclose, shelter or trap, such as ships in a bay.
   • 1876, Herman Melville, “Canto XVII”, in Walter E. Bezanson, editor, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land […], New York, N.Y.: Hendricks House, published 1960, →OCLC, part I (Jerusalem), page 56, lines 176–183:

     Hebrew the profile, every line; / But as in haven fringed with palm, / Which Indian reefs embay from harm, / Belulled as in the vase the wine— / Red budded corals in remove, / Peep coy through quietudes above; […]

   • 1912, Thomas Hardy, “An Imaginative Woman”, in Life’s Little Ironies […], New York, N.Y., London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC, page 7:

     Herself the only daughter of a struggling man of letters, she had during the last year or two taken to writing poems, in an endeavour to find a congenial channel in which to let flow her painfully embayed emotions, whose former limpidity and sparkle seemed departing in the stagnation caused by the routine of a practical household and the gloom of bearing children to a commonplace father.

References

• “embay”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• Mabey, Mbaye, abyme, beamy, maybe