Scott Pendleton
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Imbue Has Old French Roots
Like its synonym infuse, imbue implies the introduction of one thing into another so as to affect it throughout. Someone's voice can be imbued with pride, for example, or a photograph might be imbued with a sense of melancholy. In the past imbue has also been used synonymously with imbrue, an obscure word meaning “to drench or stain,” but the two words are likely unrelated. Imbue comes from the Latin verb imbuere, meaning “to dye, wet, or moisten.” Imbrue has been traced back through Anglo-French and Old French to the Latin verb bibere, meaning “to drink.”
Synonyms
Examples of imbue in a Sentence
Marina E. Franco (noticias Telemundo For Axios), Axios, 5 Nov. 2024
Catlett’s images of Black women, imbued with reverence and command, fulfilled her desire to reconfigure their identity throughout Modernist culture and to fashion an aesthetic that prioritizes their interior world, social condition, and African lineage.
—Shameekia Shantel Johnson, ARTnews.com, 4 Nov. 2024
As with any regional food imbued with a personal sense of ownership, everyone has big opinions on everything.
—Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 2 Nov. 2024
This implies that kissing is imbued with an underlying universal biological meaning that crosses cultures, hinting at an evolutionary basis older than the cultural conventions themselves.
—New Atlas, 1 Nov. 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near imbue
Cite this Entry
“Imbue.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imbue. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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imbue
verb
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