1. trans. To plunge (in a liquid); to bathe; hence, to drench, wet; to imbrue, steep.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. x. 27. Sad repentance used to embay His bodie in salt water.
1594. ? Greene, Selimus, Wks. (Grosart), XIV. 223. Our mouthes in honie to embay.
1600. Fairfax, Tasso, XII. lxii. 225. Their swords both points and edges sharpe embay In purple bloud, where so they hit or light.
1762. Churchill, Ghost. His horse, Whose sides, in their own blood embay’d, E’en to the bone were open laid.
2. fig. a. To bathe (oneself) in sleep, sunshine. b. Of sleep: To bedew, steep, suffuse, pervade.
1590. Spenser, Muiopotmos, 200. In the warme sunne he doth himselfe embay. Ibid. (1590), F. Q., I. ix. 13. Whiles every sense the humour sweet embay’d.
1610. G. Fletcher, Christ’s Vict., in Farr’s S. P. (1847), 63. And all about, embayed in soft sleep, A herd of charmed beasts aground were spread.
