1. Of souls or spirits: Having no body; not invested with a body; also, removed from the body, disembodied.
The two senses are not clearly distinguishable.
attrib. 1532. More, Confut. Tindale, Wks. 387/1. By his power mai the bodily water as wel be a working instrument upon ye vnbodied & vnbodily soule.
1589. Warner, Alb. Eng., VI. xxxii. (1592), 143. He wonne his Subiects loue,… But, as must ours, so lastly his vn-bodied Soule departs.
1643. Digby, Observ. Sir T. Browne’s Relig. Med., 10. A Separated and unbodyed Soule.
1696. Stanhope, Chr. Pattern (1711), 177. To indulge those longings and pleasures, which refined and unbodied spirits feel.
1711. Pope, Temple Fame, 101. These … call’d th’ unbody’d shades To midnight banquets in the glimm’ring glades.
1721. Tickell, Epist. Death of Addison, 48. In what new region to the just assign’d, What new employments please the unbodied mind?
1791. Cowper, Iliad, IX. 510. No force arrests Or may constrain th’ unbodied spirit back.
1810. Crabbe, Borough, xxii. 327. There were they, hard by me in the tide, The three unbodied forms.
1827. Keble, Chr. Year, 2 Lent v. Then may th’ unbodied soul in safety fleet Through the dark curtains of the world above.
pred. 1513. Douglas, Æneid, III. v. 42. Oft wald sche cleip and call, and oneith stint, Apone the saulis that wnbodeit war, Besyde Hectouris void tomb standand thair.
1665. J. Spencer, Vulg. Proph., 71. The Souls of men become half unbodyed, while they hang upon the lips of these extraordinary persons.
1678. Lively Oracles, III. § 23 (1684), 270. We must be unbodied our selves before we can perfectly conceive what he is.
1726. Pope, Odyssey, XXIV. 19. The spectres … rest at last, where souls unbodied dwell.
c. 1750. Collins, Ode Superst. Highl., 60. When, o’er the wat’ry strath, or quaggy moss, They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop.
1818. Byron, Ch. Har., IV. ix. My spirit shall resume it—if we may Unbodied choose a sanctuary.
2. Of abstract or immaterial things: Not having a corporeal form.
1606. Shaks., Tr. & Cr., I. iii. 16. That vnbodied figure of the thought That gaue’t surmised shape.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iii. ¶ 37. 157. As Knowledge and Understanding only, which is Art naked, abstract and unbodied.
c. 1800. H. K. White, On Survey Heavens, v. Say, foolish one—can that unbodied fame … Give a new zest to bliss?
1820. Shelley, Skylark, 15. Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
a. 1851. Moir, Poems, Night-Hawk, xiii. Most lonely voice! most wild unbodied scream!
3. Of substances or material things: Not having a definite form.
1630. Davenant, Just Italian, Wks. (1673), 457. Wilt thou not bleed? not yet? I skirmish with unbodied air.
1651. French, Distill., v. 163. Salts unbodied are farre more acid then when they have assumed a body. Ibid. (1652), Yorksh. Spa, vii. 67. Those spirits,… becoming to be unbodied (for before they were incorporated with the water),… penetrate even the glass it self.
1845. Bailey, Festus (ed. 2), 215. Command of mind alone, and of the world Unbodied and all-lovely.
