Other forms: embodied, embodies, embodying
To embody is to be the living example of an idea. Embody the spirit of it, embodied in law, she embodies the values.
The second use is legal and technical: a principle embodied in a statute is one written into it. The word says the idea has been given a body, which is exactly what it was built from.
1verbembodyTo be the living example of an idea.
“For many people, the old teacher embodied everything that was good about the school.”
embody is a representing.
Em-, into, plus body, from the idea of giving something bodily form.
Middle English
bodi
English
body
English, today
embody
Built from
From em- + body. From em + body. body comes from Middle English bodi. From Middle English body, bodi, bodiȝ, from Old English bodiġ, bodeġ (“body, trunk, chest, torso, height, stature”), from Proto-West Germanic bodag (“body, trunk”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰewdʰ- (“to be awake, observe”). Cognate with Old High German botah (“body, corpse, trunk, torso”) (whence swg Bottich (“body, torso”), bar Bottich (“body, torso, carcass; lower part of a shirt or jacket”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA