emboss

UK/ɪmˈbɒs/US/əmˈbɔs/

verbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,017 of 15,258Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: embossed, embossing

To emboss is to raise a design above a flat surface. Embossed leather, emboss the cover, an embossed seal.

The raised side is embossing and the sunken side of the same operation is debossing, which is why a card can be either. It is done with a die under pressure, and on official documents an embossed seal is hard to forge because it is felt as well as seen.

Definitions of emboss

1verbembossTo raise a design above a flat surface.C1
“The company's name is embossed on the cover, so you can feel the letters.”

emboss is a decorating.

Where it comes from

Middle English embossen, from Old French, from a root meaning a boss or a raised stud on a shield.

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰewd-
Proto-Germanic
*bautaną — to beat; to bump, knock; to push
Proto-West Germanic
*bautan — to beat
Vulgar Latin
*bottia — a bump
Old French
embocer
Middle English
embossen
English, today
emboss

Built from

embocen · Middle English — to be bloated; to bulge; to cause to bulge; to ornament in relief, emboss
boce · Old French — swelling
boce · Old French — swelling

The verb is derived from Late Middle English embossen, embosen, embocen (“to be bloated; to bulge; to cause to bulge; to ornament in relief, emboss”)enboce, enbos, enboss, from Old French embocer (modern French embosser), from em- (a variant of en-) + boce (“swelling”) + -er; boce (“swelling”) is derived from Vulgar Latin bottia (“a bump”), ultimately from Proto-West Germanic bautan (“to beat”), from Proto-Germanic bautaną (“to beat; to bump, knock; to push”). The English word is analysable as em + boss. The noun is derived from the verb.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

emboss in the wild

Using braille translation software, a document can be translated into braille and then embossed with relative ease.
Braille embosser
An embossed pattern is raised against the background, while a debossed pattern is sunken into the surface of the material but might protrude somewhat on the reverse side.
Paper embossing
The Great Seal of the State of Vermont is the official seal of the U.S. state of Vermont, used to emboss and authenticate official documents.
Seal of Vermont
Applying an embossing filter to an image often results in an image resembling a paper or metal embossing of the original image, hence the name.
Image embossing
According to Geomagic, their platform for designing organic shaped products can sculpt, texture or emboss products with detail and articulation that traditional geometric CAD solutions simply cannot handle.
Wyrd (company)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the boce family

cabbage

emboss — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,017 · point at the bar for the others

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