English

Alternative forms

• indue
• indew

Verb

endue ‎(third-person singular simple present endues, present participle enduing, simple past and past participle endued)

1. (obsolete) To pass food into the stomach; to digest; also figuratively, to take on, absorb.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.x:

     none but she it vewed, / Who well perceiued all, and all indewed.

2. To take on, to take the form of.
   • 1988, Anthony Burgess, Any Old Iron,

     My transport of the afternoon, and the matter of physical contrast, made me endue the tactile apparatus of another man, any man but me, and imagine the beauty of Zip in his caressing arms.

3. To clothe (someone with something).
   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked

     Judaea greeted its monarch. He was to ascend to the immemorial sacring place of millennia of kings, there to be endued with the robe and crown of rule.

4. To invest (someone) with a given quality, property etc.; to endow.
   • 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, I.11:

     That the Sun, Moon, and Stars are living creatures, endued with soul and life, seems an innocent Error, and an harmless digression from truth [...].

   • 1663, Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, part 1, canto 1

     Thus was th' accomplish'd squire endued \ With gifts and knowledge per'lous shrewd.

   • 1818, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein:

     A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain.

Derived terms

• enduement

Translations