embracement

embracement

English

Alternative forms

• imbracement

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French embracement; equivalent to embrace +‎ -ment.

Noun

embracement (countable and uncountable, plural embracements)

1. A clasp in the arms; embrace.
   • 1594 (first publication), Christopher Marlow[e], The Trovblesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edvvard the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, OCLC 837836359, (please specify the page):

     Kinde wordes, and mutuall talke, makes our greefe greater.
     Therefore with dum imbracement let vs part,

   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 8, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

     What was that but a kinde, tender, and fatherly farwell which he tooke of his children? representing the last adiewes, and parting imbracements [translating embrassemens], which at our death we give unto our dearest issues?

   • 1932, Aldous Huxley, London: Chatto & Windus, Chapter 11,

     Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.

2. State of embracing, encompassing or including various items; inclusion.
   • 1903, Stewart Edward White, The Forest, New York: The Outlook Company, Chapter 9, p. 105,

     The question of flies—using that, to a woodsman, eminently connotive word in its wide embracement of mosquitoes, sand-flies, deer-flies, black flies, and midges—is one much mooted in the craft.

3. Act or state of embracing or accepting; willing acceptance.
   • 1666, George Alsop, A Character of the Province of Mary-Land, London: Peter Dring, “To my Brother,” p. 85,

     […] what Destiny has ordered I am resolved with an adventerous Resolution to subscribe to, and with a contented imbracement enjoy it.

   • 1784, John Brown, A Compendious History of the British Churches in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, Glasgow, p. 241,

     His embracement of Popery beginning to make a noise, he decoyed several of the most eminent Protestant clergymen in France to give assurances of the contrary.

   • 1994, Robert Alun Jones, Durkheim’s Imperative: “The Role of Humanities Faculty in the Information Technologies Revolution” in Brett Sutton (editor), Literary Texts in an Electronic Age: Scholarly Implications and Library Services, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, p. 175,

     […] I believe that it is this moral dimension of the division of intellectual labor that leads many of us to feel discomfort as we survey the detritus of our traditional roles, the havoc provoked by our attraction to and embracement of these powerful technologies.

4. State of being contained; enclosure.
   • 1664, John Heydon, Theomagia, London: Henry Brome, Book III, p. 153,

     […] the Sun […] of himself, ever shineth and seeth all things, if his Beams be not stopt with a Cloud or some other thick imbracement […]

   • 1904, Hall Caine, The Prodigal Son, London: Heinemann, Part 6, Chapter 8, p. 353,

     The Heath itself when they came to it was a white wilderness within the embracement of black rocks and mountains.

References

• embracement in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913