imbook and imbrangle and embrangle and enwomb and imbrier

I have several "Ims" left on the list I put together a few weeks ago as I was working through the dictionaries. Where to begin? Rather than playing "hide the ball," why don't I list some of the words that entrance me that I haven't yet touched? We have imbue, imbrue and imbrute. Then I have imbrier and imbrangle (embrangle). We have imbreast and imbosom (embosom), and then imbolish, imblemish, imbathe, immerge, imbook and probably a few others.

Beginning with Imbrier

I think I am attracted to this word both because I see the way that people (as well as myself) get "hung up" on things, and I don't want to use the words "hung up" anymore. Imbrier means, obviously, "to entangle as among briers," and is attested in the OED in a few quotations. It can be used literally: "Amidst how many Brambles and Bushes...must he imbryer..himself withall." I think it has greater figurative possibilities: "That they were imbryar'd in an Indian-war." "The President's missteps, compounded with equivocal explanations, imbriered him deeper in his web of deception." A synonymn of imbrier, attested more fully, is embrangle/imbrangle. The OED informs us that embrangle is derived from brangle, and one of the two uses of this word as a verb is to "wrangle, squabble, dispute contentiously." A brangle, then, is a "brawl, wrangle, squabble" or, a word whose sound I like, "a brabble." Two attestations of brangle as a verb are worth hearing. "Flesh & bloud will brangle, And murmuring Reason with th' Almighty wrangle." And, "thus wrangled, brangled, jangled they a month."

But then we return to embrangle/imbrangle: "to entangle, confuse, perplex." To those of us who think that by focusing on law we are clarifying life, we have: "In knotted Law, like Nets..they are imbrangled." Or, the philosopher Berkeley could say, "I am ...embrangled in inexplicable difficulties." I wish more academics would emblazon/imblazon that line on their hearts and write it on the walls of their office, and not be afraid to say that they don't understand things. Most of life is spent in confusion, I think, where we don't really understand why we think the way we do or why someone else is acting the way that he/she does or, simply, what it all "means." Then, Coleridge too was not ashamed to use the word. "The perplexities with which..I have been thorned and embrangled." So, let's discard "tied up" or "hung up" in favor of imbriered and embrangled. I bet life would begin to make much more sense.

Imbreast/Imbosom(Embosom)

But we can become close to someone without becoming imbriered with them. We might imbreast them or "hold them in our breast or bosom." The more common word, however, is imbosom/embosom, which the OED defines as "to take to one's bosom," or "to enclose, conceal, shelter" in the bosom. It is often used in the passive voice, also, to mean "to be enclosed or enveloped in" something. The earliest English attestation is from Spenser's Fairie Queen: "The handmayd..glad t' embosome his affection vile." Or, from mythological speech, "Tithon's wife embosom'd by him lies." From 1645: "Anger rests Embosom'd..in foolish brests." This quotation is attributed, appropriately, to a Mr. Quarles. But it is also a very modern word. From the 19th century: "Shall..such a monster..By Britons be..embosomed?" And, we cannot leave the subject without a reference to a theologian: "All the Father embosometh the Son."

I think we could use the word "inwomb" (the OED has it as "enwomb") to supplement embosom and perhaps to express one layer of deeper "burying" than even embosom. "Some people are not simply embosomed within an institution but inwombed there too." We sometimes have trouble coming out of the womb that gave us birth; perhaps that is why we seek the security of religious and other orthodoxies, where others do the thinking for us, and we are thereby protected.

Finishing with Imbook

Imbook means "to enter in a book; register." I think it is a useful "short-cut" word, to keep us from saying that "His name was written in the book." We can simply say, "he was imbooked." From 1587: "To regester, imbooke, or inchronicle all such worthy persons.." Even the OED doesn't have an entry for inchronicle, however. At the ceremony where my daughter was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, one of the rituals is for the person to write her name in the permanent book of PBK members. "After she was imbooked, she straightened her cap and gown, and cast me a smile that made me see her not as a 22 year-old graduate but as my six month-old little girl. It is from experiences like this that you see the ability of the mind and heart to leap over intervening decades and settle into a memory that is fixed deeply in the consciousness."

One more page on "Ims" ought to suffice us.

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