trans. To bathe, immerse, dip; to bedew, drench, suffuse.
1593. Tell-Trothe’s N. Y. Gift, 42. Whosoever inbathe themselves therein.
1596. Fitz-Geffrey, Sir F. Drake (1881), 22. Imbath your … lofty quill In … amber-dropping Castalie.
1606. Chapman, Cont. Marlowe’s Hero & L., iii. [Her love] that with immortall wine Should be embath’d, and swim in more hearts ease Than there was water in the Sestian seas.
1634. Milton, Comus, 835. Nereus … gave her to his daughters to embathe In nectared lavers. Ibid. (1641), Reform., 2. The sweet odour of the returning gospel [must] imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven.
1776. Mickle, trans. Camoens’ Lusiad, 454. Embathe with gore Carpella’s Cape.
1855. Bailey, Mystic. His limbs imbathed Amid immortal nymphs.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul, I. 425. The perfumes with which Mary of Bethany embathed his feet.
b. intr. for refl.
1794[?]. Coleridge, To Unfort. Woman, viii. She dare … embathe in heavenly light.
Hence Embathed ppl. a., in quot. elliptical for embathed in perfume, hence fragrant.
1590. Spenser, Muiopotmos, 194. Embathed Balme.
