immure

present singular third person immures · participle present immuring · participle past immured · past immured

1. transitiveTo cloister, confine, imprison or hole up: to lock someone up or seclude oneself behind walls.

   Immured in Heaven! What a Cell! / Let every bondage be, / Thou Sweetest of the Universe, / Like that which ravished thee!

   a. 1887 (date written), Emily Dickinson, “[Part 5: The Single Hound] Immured in Heaven!”, in Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson, editors, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, centenary edition, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, and Company, published November 1930, →OCLC, page 254

   5 more examples

   The gentlemen looked at each other for a ſolution of this ſtrange event, each preſuming an order had been obtained to again immure the unfortunate Clara.

   1799, Mary Meeke, Elleſmere: A Novel, volume IV, William Lane, pages 219–220

   [I]n the reign of Henry the Second, a body happening, by chance, to be dug up near Glastonbury Abbey, without any symptoms of putrefaction or decay, the Welch, the descendants of the Ancient Britons, tenacious of the dignity and reputation of that illustrious hero [King Arthur], vainly supposed it could be no other than the body of their justly-boasted Pen-Dragon; and that he had been immured in that sepulchre by the spells of some powerful and implacable inchanter.

   1810, J[ohn] Stagg, “Arthur’s Cave. A Legendary Tale.”, in The Minstrel of the North: Or, Cumbrian Legends. […], London: Printed by Hamblin and Seyfang, […], for the author, and sold by J. Blacklock, […], →OCLC, page 105

   In a happy moment for the Levy-Lawson-Levis, Lady Lytton was betrayed, seized, and immured. The Editor saw his chance, and made the Metropolis ring with the outrage. Levi was saved; so also was Lady Lytton.

   1880, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, A Blighted Life, Preface

   This rule is followed in all common-law jurisdictions, although it was not adopted by the House of Lords until 1932, and then only with vigorous dissent, in a case where a mouse was immured in a ginger-beer bottle.

   1933 December, Albert H. Cotton, “A Note on the Civil Remedies of Injured Consumers”, in David F. Cavers (editor), Duke University School of Law, Law and Contemporary Problems, Volume I Number I, Duke University Press (1934), page 71

   Mattes creates a perversely sympathetic character: one who is so immured and immersed in his own self-pity/-hatred that his only connection to life is to dominate and control those with whom he connects.

   1986 February 1, Michael Bronski, “Mock Homage to Fassbinder's Life & Films”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 28, page 6

   Synonyms: cloister, confine, hem up, imprison, incarcerate

2. transitiveTo put or bury within a wall.

   John's body was immured Thursday in the mausoleum.

   1 more example

   The dreadful punishment of immuring persons, or burying them alive in the walls of convents, was undoubtedly sometimes resorted to by monastic communities.

   1906, Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, volume 1, page 807

   Synonyms: inter

3. To wall in.
4. transitivechemistryTo trap or capture (an impurity); chiefly in the participial adjective immured and gerund or gerundial noun immuring.

   1975, American Institute of Physics, American Crystallographic Association, Soviet Physics, Crystallography, Volume 19, Issues 1-3, page 296, On increasing the supercooling, the step starts completely immuring the impurity and v rises sharply.

plural immures · alternative emure

1. obsoleteA wall; an enclosure.

   […]Troy, within whose strong emures[…]

   c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act PROLOGUE, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)]