engrail

English

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ɪŋˈɡɹeɪl/

Etymology 1

en- +‎ grail. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Verb

engrail (third-person singular simple present engrails, present participle engrailing, simple past and past participle engrailed)

  1. (transitive) To make rough.
  2. (intransitive) To form an edging or border; to run in curved or indented lines.
    • a. 1718, Thomas Parnell, Solomon:
      Fine gold engrail'd adorns the figur'd floor

Etymology 2

French engrêler

Verb

engrail (third-person singular simple present engrails, present participle engrailing, simple past and past participle engrailed)

  1. (transitive) To variegate or spot, as with hail.
  2. (transitive, heraldry, archaic) To indent with small curves.
    • 1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 120:
      He crossed through the high grass and went up the slope, climbing with handholds in the new turf until he gained the crest and turned to look down on the river and the city beyond, casting a gray glance along that varied world, the pieced plowland, the houses, the odd grady of the small metropolis against the green and blooming hills and the flat bow of the river like a serpentine trench poured with dull slag save where the wind engrailed its face and it shimmered lightly in the sun.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “engrail”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams
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