To imbue (v.) is to fill up with or become "soaked" in an idea or emotion, as a sponge takes in water. One visit to Africa might be enough to imbue ambitions in a medical student to return to heal the sick.
- Pronunciation: / ɪm'bjʊ/
- English description: fill, soak, or imbue totally
- Synonyms: soak
- Chinese Translation: 灌输(guan4 shu1)
- Spanish Translation: imbuir
- ORIGIN: You can use imbue in a similar way as "saturate," or "soak through," to describe a filling or absorbing. A "hue" is a color, and it rhymes with imbue. When you're imbued with something, you are, in a way, colored by it. If you imbue a dish sponge with oily orange water from a spaghetti bowl, the color and the oil soak in. To fill people with qualities or emotions is, for example, to imbue them with strength or optimism.
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
- Kill them and a mist will rise up and descend on another group imbuing them with a similar unholy light.
- The music takes effect, its beauty imbuing the mournful text with irrepressible hope as the voices fade to a rapt conclusion.
*New word description, story and part of "EXAMPLE SENTENCE" are cited in Vocabulary
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