embracement

plural embracements · alternative obsolete imbracement

1. Synonym of embrace, variously
   1. countableuncountableAn act of encircling another with one's arms and pulling them to one's chest, a hug.

      1932, Aldous Huxley, London: Chatto & Windus, Chapter 11, Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.

      2 more examples

      Kinde wordes, and mutuall talke, makes our greefe greater. Therefore with dum imbracement let vs part,

      1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, (please specify the page)

      What was that but a kinde, tender, and fatherly farwell which he tooke of his children? representing the last adiewes, and parting imbracements [translating embrassemens], which at our death we give unto our dearest issues?

      1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 8, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

   2. countablefigurativelyuncountableThe state of embracing, inclusion.

      The question of flies—using that, to a woodsman, eminently connotive word in its wide embracement of mosquitoes, sand-flies, deer-flies, black flies, and midges—is one much mooted in the craft.

      1903, Stewart Edward White, chapter 9, in The Forest, New York: The Outlook Company, page 105

   3. countablefigurativelyuncountableAn act of embracing, full acceptance.

      […] what Destiny has ordered I am resolved with an adventerous Resolution to subscribe to, and with a contented imbracement enjoy it.

      1666, George Alsop, “To my Brother”, in A Character of the Province of Mary-Land, London: Peter Dring, page 85

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      His embracement of Popery beginning to make a noise, he decoyed several of the most eminent Protestant clergymen in France to give assurances of the contrary.

      1784, John Brown, A Compendious History of the British Churches in England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, Glasgow, page 241

      1994, Robert Alun Jones, Durkheim’s Imperative: “The Role of Humanities Faculty in the Information Technologies Revolution” in Brett Sutton (editor), Literary Texts in an Electronic Age: Scholarly Implications and Library Services, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, p. 175, […] I believe that it is this moral dimension of the division of intellectual labor that leads many of us to feel discomfort as we survey the detritus of our traditional roles, the havoc provoked by our attraction to and embracement of these powerful technologies.

      "I think the embracement of AI is going to be one of the great divides of our generation," she continued, saying that as a lifelong San Franciscan, she is already seeing the impacts of that divide. "When I find out someone is working in AI, I judge their character completely..."

      2026 July 1, Grace McCarty, "'It's Like Having a Dumb Friend': Young San Franciscans Hate AI", SFGate

   4. countablefigurativelyuncountableAn enclosure.

      The Heath itself when they came to it was a white wilderness within the embracement of black rocks and mountains.

      1904, Hall Caine, The Prodigal Son, London: Heinemann, Part 6, Chapter 8, p. 353

      1 more example

      […] the Sun […] of himself, ever shineth and seeth all things, if his Beams be not stopt with a Cloud or some other thick imbracement […]

      1664, John Heydon, Theomagia, London: Henry Brome, Book III, p. 153