Forms: 6 ambuscaid, imboscade, 6– embuscade. [a. Fr. embuscade, ad. It. imboscata, or Sp. emboscada, Pg. embuscada (= OFr. embuchée), ppl. deriv. of imboscare (Sp. emboscar, Pg. embuscar, Fr. embucher): see AMBUSH v. and -ADE 1. For spelling with initial a, see AMBUSH. Almost displaced in 17th c. by the quasi-Spanish form AMBUSCADO.]
1. = AMBUSH 1 (and now more formal as a military term).
1582–8. Hist. James VI. (1804), 163. Thair was men lying in ambuscaid to haue trappit him.
1591. Garrard, Art of Warre, 77. In placing Imboscades.
1679. Establ. Test., 22. They post themselves as in a wood, and lie in Ambuscade.
1694. Crowne, Regulus, IV. 35. Y’ entice me into a dangerous ambuscade.
1697. Dryden, Æneid, VI. 697 (J.).
| Then, waving high her torch, the signal made, | |
| Which rouz’d the Grecians from their ambuscade. |
1757. Burke, Abridgm. Eng. Hist., Wks. X. 176. They formed frequent ambuscades.
1811. Wellington, in Gen. Desp., VII. 280. They had been lying in ambuscade for the patroles … for some days; but he contrived to draw them to an ambuscade which he had laid.
1846. Grote, Greece, III. xxx. 100. To fall into an ambuscade.
2. The force placed in ambush, the company of liers in wait; = AMBUSH 2.
a. 1674. Clarendon, Hist. Reb., III. xv. 454. An Ambuscade in the woods … fell upon them with such fury, that disordered the whole Army.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F. (1869), II. xliii. 611. They were assaulted on the flanks by two ambuscades.
1814. Scott, Ld. of Isles, V. xxvii. It waked the lurking ambuscade.
3. fig. = AMBUSH 4.
1794. S. Williams, Hist. Vermont, 143. All is then caution, stratagem, secrecy, and ambuscade.
1842. Mrs. Gore, Fascination, 148. In spite of this ambuscade, Martha made other preparatives of defence.
1844. H. Rogers, Ess., I. ii. 84. Nothing but the ambuscade of a fallacy.
