wreathe

From Middle English wrethen (“to twist”), partly a back-formation of Middle English wrethen, writhen ("wreathed, twisted"; > modern English wreathen), past participle of wrythen (“to writhe”); and partly from Middle English wrethe (“wreath”).

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: rēth, IPA^(key): /ɹiːð/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• (General American), IPA^(key): /ɹið/
• Rhymes: -iːð

wreathe (third-person singular simple present wreathes, present participle wreathing, simple past and past participle wreathed)

1. (transitive) To twist, curl or entwine something into a shape similar to a wreath.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:

     You do not love Maria; Longaville / Did never sonnet for her sake compile, / Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart / His loving bosom to keep down his heart.

   • 1681, Andrew Marvell, The Fair Singer‎, lines 10–12:

     But how should I avoid to be her slave, / Whose subtle art invisibly can wreathe / My fetters of the very air I breathe?

   • 1818, John Keats, “Book I”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] [T. Miller] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 3, lines 6-11:

     Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing / A flowery band to bind us to the earth, / Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth / Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, / Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways / Made for our searching: […]

2. (transitive) To form a wreathlike shape around something.
   • 1915 June, T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, in Prufrock and Other Observations, London: The Egotist […], published 1917, →OCLC, page 16:

     We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

   • 1942, Emily Carr, “The Orange Lily”, in The Book of Small:

     The flowers crackled at Anne’s touch. “Enough to wreathe the winter’s dead,” she said with a happy little sigh and, taking a pink bud from the pile, twined it in the lace of her black cap.

3. (intransitive) To curl, writhe or spiral in the form of a wreath.
   • 1833, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A True Dream‎, New York: Macmillan, published 1914:

     I unsealed the vial mystical, / I outpoured the liquid thing, / And while the smoke came wreathing out, / I stood unshuddering.

4. (obsolete) To turn violently aside or around; to wrench.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     from so heauie sight his head did wreath, / Accusing fortune, and too cruell fate […]

• wreath (verb)

• weareth, weather, whate'er, whereat