embay

American  

[em-bey] / ɛmˈbeɪ /

verb (used with object)

1. to enclose in or as if in a bay; surround or envelop.

2. to form into a bay.

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embay British  

/ ɪmˈbeɪ /

verb

1. to form into a bay

2. to enclose in or as if in a bay

3. (esp of the wind) to force (a ship, esp a sailing ship) into a bay

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Other Word Forms

• unembayed adjective

Etymology

Origin of embay

First recorded in 1575–85; em- ¹ + bay ¹

Example Sentences

The pent-up emotion had swollen and swollen inside the young thing till the dam could no longer embay it.

From Desperate Remedies by Hardy, Thomas

A grey, shallow sea had slowly eaten away the rotten land, and the embay was formed by two low headlands hardly showing above the water at high tide.

From The Untilled Field by Moore, George (George Augustus)

Then when he hath both plaid, and fed his fill, 205 In the warme sunne he doth himselfe embay*, And there him rests in riotous suffisaunce Of all his gladfulnes and kingly ioyaunce.

From The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 by Spenser, Edmund

The softened season all the landscape charms; Those hills, my native village that embay, 20In waves of dreamier purple roll away, And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering farms.

From The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell; With a Biographical Sketch and Notes, a Portrait and Other Illustrations by Lowell, James Russell