IMPALE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Impale

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/ɪmpˈeɪl/ Listen

verb

Empale v. t. (past & past part. empaled; pres. part. empaling) (Written also impale)

To fence or fortify with stakes; to surround with a line of stakes for defense; to impale. "All that dwell near enemies empale villages, to save themselves from surprise."

To inclose; to surround. See Impale.

To put to death by thrusting a sharpened stake through the body.

(Her.) Same as Impale.

Impale v. t. (past & past part. impaled; pres. part. impaling)

To pierce with a pale; to put to death by fixing on a sharp stake. See Empale. "Then with what life remains, impaled, and left To writhe at leisure round the bloody stake."

To inclose, as with pales or stakes; to surround. "Impale him with your weapons round about." "Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire."

(Her.) To join, as two coats of arms on one shield, palewise; hence, to join in honorable mention. "Ordered the admission of St. Patrick to the same to be matched and impaled with the blessed Virgin in the honor thereof."

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Etymology of 'Impale'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Impale" Quotes from Famous Books

... the others: "Look at him! He draws and presents that card as though it were a sword at his enemy's throat! I hope he won't impale her upon it." ...

— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson

... of blood; if he did not rip open pregnant women, like Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois; if he did not scourge women on the breasts, testibusque viros, like Ferdinand of Toledo; if he did not break on the wheel alive, burn alive, boil alive, flay alive, crucify, impale, and quarter, blame him not, the fault was not his; the age obstinately refuses to allow it. He has done all that was humanly or inhumanly possible. Given the nineteenth century, a century of gentleness,—of decadence, say the papists and friends of arbitrary power,—Louis ...

— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... what horrible impiety art thou committing! what, ravishing the wife of my bosom!—Take him away; ganch him[5], impale him, rid the world of such a ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... falls like a sigh On chalet low and chateau high; And the far cataract's voice comes nigh, Where no man hears; And spectral peaks impale ...

— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... with the mate in the long-boat some distance up the river Peiho, a rushing, turbid stream at the mouth of which the Chinese had fixed a very chevaux-de-frise of spikes, upon which they had fondly hoped our men-of-war would impale themselves, forgetting that the depth of water scarcely permitted the approach of a shallow gunboat. We were returning to the ship with a fair wind, and on top of the fierce rush of the river, when our helmsman ...

— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

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