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imbue

UK/ɪmˈbjuː/US/ɪmˈbju/
verbC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,935 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: imbued, imbuing, imbues

To imbue is to fill something through and through with a quality. Imbued with meaning, imbue them with confidence, imbued with a sense of duty.

It is nearly always passive and always takes with. The Latin means to moisten or soak, which is the image the word still carries of something taken up throughout rather than applied on top.

Definitions of imbue

  1. 1verbimbueTo fill something through and through with a quality.C2

    “Her grandmother imbued her with a love of gardening that lasted all her life.”

imbue is a filling.

Where it comes from

Latin imbuere means to moisten or soak; imbibe is a relative.

  1. Latin

    imbuō — wet, moisten

  2. English, today

    imbue

From Latin imbuō (“wet, moisten”). Compare imbibe.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

imbue in the wild

  • When eaten by dairy cows, the plant tends to imbue their milk with an unpleasant taste.

    Sium latifolium

  • The main aim of Harikatha is to imbue truth and righteousness in the minds of people and sow the seeds of devotion in them.

    Harikatha

  • The Vietnamese Buddhist Youth Association) is a lay Buddhist youth organization that seeks to imbue its members with Buddhist ethics.

    Vietnamese Buddhist Youth Association

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.