Other forms: embroidered, embroidering, embroiders
To embroider is to sew a design onto cloth, or to add invented detail. Embroider a cushion, embroidered initials, embroider the story.
The figurative sense is the useful one: to embroider a story is to add decoration that was not there, which is a gentler charge than lying. In sewing it covers everything from a monogram to a whole picture worked in thread.
1verbembroiderTo sew a design onto cloth, or to add invented detail.
“Her grandmother embroidered little flowers on the corners of every handkerchief.”
embroider is a decorating.
Middle English embrouderen comes from Old French broder, to embroider, probably from a Germanic root.
Old French
embrosder — to embroider
Anglo-Norman
embrouder
Middle English
embrouderen
English, today
embroider
Built from
From Middle English embrouderen, frequentative of embrouden (“to decorate, embroider”), equivalent to embroid + -er. Middle English embrouden itself comes from Anglo-Norman embrouder, from Old French embrosder (“to embroider”), ultimately of gem - origin, though the exact pathway is unknown. Possibly an intensive of Old French brosder, brouder (compare Norman broudaïr), from Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌿𐌶𐌳𐍉𐌽, related to English bristle and brad. Alternatively, perhaps from Frankish anabroʀdōn (“to embroider, stitch”), related to Old High German anabrortōn (“to embroider”), Old English onbryrdan (“to prick, incite”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA