engrail
English
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ɪŋˈɡɹeɪl/
Etymology 1
en- + grail. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Verb
engrail (third-person singular simple present engrails, present participle engrailing, simple past and past participle engrailed)
- (transitive) To make rough.
- (intransitive) To form an edging or border; to run in curved or indented lines.
- a. 1718, Thomas Parnell, Solomon
- Fine gold engrail'd adorns the figur'd floor
- a. 1718, Thomas Parnell, Solomon
Etymology 2
French engrêler
Verb
engrail (third-person singular simple present engrails, present participle engrailing, simple past and past participle engrailed)
- (transitive) To variegate or spot, as with hail.
- [1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, OCLC 614803194; The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], volume (please specify the book number), new edition, London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843, OCLC 987451361:
- a caldron new engrailed with twenty hues
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- (transitive, heraldry, archaic) To indent with small curves.
- 1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, p.120:
- He crossed through the high grass and went up the slope, climbing with handholds in the new turf until he gained the crest and turned to look down on the river and the city beyond, casting a gray glance along that varied world, the pieced plowland, the houses, the odd grady of the small metropolis against the green and blooming hills and the flat bow of the river like a serpentine trench poured with dull slag save where the wind engrailed its face and it shimmered lightly in the sun.
- 1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, p.120:
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for engrail in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)
Anagrams
- Relangi, aligner, inlarge, learing, nargile, realign, reginal