Meanings
present singular third person ambasses · participle present ambassing · participle past ambassed · past ambassed
- humorousnonstandardTo engage in the professional work of an ambassador.
How fruitless attempts to involve us in war With HIM to AMBASS and with HER to ADOR.
1913, John Kendrick Bangs, "To Marse Tom and Meh Lady", The Bookman, Volume XXXVIII, page 1145 more examples
The home of an American Ambassador should express America not the country to which he is sent to Ambass.
1917, John Kendrick Bangs, Half hours with the Idiot, Little, Brown, and Company, page 4Politics, graft, war, sport and scandal are aired in turn, but the "ambassador" fails to ambass — the "worker" fails to work — the "messenger" makes a mess of it.
1914,, Association men, Volume 39, YMCA of the USA, page 361... cut off from their governments and obliged to rely on their own wisdom, knowledge and experience, when they had, in a word, to ambass. Nowadays they pick up the phone and the State Department, for better or worse, tells then what to do.
1961, Ilka Chase, The Carthaginian rose, Doubleday, page 51I have always maintained there was something wrong with Ambassadors, as none of them seemed to ambass properly.
1995, Will Rogers, Will Rogers speaks, →ISBN, page 21"Therefore," said Kirk, […] "Shipping her back in box is not one of the options, […] this will require the skills of an Ambassador. So you're going to have to […] Ambass."
2001, Peter David, The Rift (2001) (Star Trek: The Original Series Book 57), Simon & Schuster, page 161
Origin
Irregular back-formation from ambassador.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Portuguese embaixar
- embaixarto engage in the professional work of an ambassador
Cite this entry
ambass. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ambass
“ambass.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ambass. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ambass,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ambass.
Source: ambass on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.