purvey

present singular third person purveys · participle present purveying · participle past purveyed · past purveyed · alternative puruey

1. intransitiveobsoleteTo prepare in advance (for or to do something); to plan, make provision.

   A sayd the kynge / syn ye knowe of your aduenture puruey for hit / and put awey by your craftes that mysauenture / Nay said Merlyn it wylle not be / soo he departed from the kynge

   1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “j”, in Le Morte Darthur, book IV

2. transitiveTo furnish or provide.

   Giue no ods to your foes, but do puruay / Your selfe of sword before that bloudy day:

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 15

   1 more example

   Those who sell their own products are distinguished from purveyors, who purvey what others produce.

   2005, Lesley Brown, trans. Plato, Sophist, 223d

3. transitiveTo procure; to get.

   I mean to purvey me a wife after the fashion of the children of Benjamin.

   1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC

1. A surname.