Word.ws English Dictionary

empalement

empalement is the obsolete form of impalement.

Meaning of impalement

Noun

impalement (countable and uncountable, plural impalements)

  1. The act of torturing or executing someone by impaling them on a sharp stake.
  2. The joining of two coats of arms on one shield.
  3. A space fenced in, such as by palings, possibly in the form of an enclosure or cup.
  4. (obsolete) In the sense of an enclosure, the calyx of a flower. (In still older works, also spelt empalement.)
    • The parts of fructification are seven in number... The First part is the calyx, impalement, or flower cup.1823, Charles Mead, The School Exercise

Forms of empalement

pluralempalements

Origin of empalement

Equivalent to empale + -ment.

Questions about empalement

What is empalement the obsolete form of?
Empalement is the obsolete form of impalement.

Words near empalement in the dictionary

  1. empairment
  2. empairs
  3. empaistic
  4. empale
  5. empaled
  6. empalement
  7. empalements
  8. empaler
  9. empalers
  10. empales
  11. empaling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: empalement (page history and authors); impalement (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “empalement.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/empalement. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.