† 1. intr. To leave or quit the body. Obs.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Troylus, V. 1550. The fate wold his soule sholde vnbodye, And shapen hadde a mene it out to dryue.
1387–8. T. Usk, Test. Love, I. i. (Skeat), l. 88. These diseses mowen wel, by duresse of sorowe, make my lyfe to unbodye, and so for to dye.
2. trans. To remove from the body; to disembody.
a. 1548. Hall, Chron., Hen. VI., 83. Death … vnbodiyng the solle of this godly prince,… appalled the hertes … of the Englishe nacion.
1577. Holinshed, Chron., I. Hist. Scot., 138/1. Herevpon followed a feuer … that after xiiij. monethes space vnbodied his ghost.
1602. Warner, Alb. Eng., Epit. (1612), 394. Prince Edward,… also formerly vnbodied by that Tyrant Gloucester.
1650. T. Vaughan, Anthroposophia, 53. I am unbodi’d by thy Books, and Thee, And in thy Papers finde my Extasie.
1753. A. Murphy, Gray’s-Inn Jrnl., No. 60, II. 46. As soon as the Spirit shall be unbodied, it will instantly smile at our wisest Employments in this world.
1787. Generous Attachment, I. 174. Would to heaven it was in my power to unbody myself, and like a celestial being, to come to you on a sun beam!
fig. 1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. ii. 51. Plato and Aristotle … took the Theology and Doctrine of Incorporeals, but Unbodied, and Devested of its most Proper and convenient Vehicle, the Atomical Physiology.
† b. Chem. To render amorphous. Obs.–1
1651. French, Distill., v. 163. We must … consider which way we may unbody Nitre (because it is scarse possible to get it before it hath received its body).
