Word.ws English Dictionary

imbay

imbay is the archaic form of embay.

Meaning of embay

Verb (1)

embay (third-person singular simple present embays, present participle embaying, simple past and past participle embayed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To bathe; to steep.
    • Sweete Loue, that doth his golding wings embay / In bleſſed Nectar, and pure Pleaſures well[…].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 560

Verb (2)

embay (third-person singular simple present embays, present participle embaying, simple past and past participle embayed)

  1. (transitive) To shut in, enclose, shelter or trap, such as ships in a bay.
    • Hebrew the profile, every line; / But as in haven fringed with palm, / Which Indian reefs embay from harm, / Belulled as in the vase the wine— / Red budded corals in remove, / Peep coy through quietudes above; […]1876, Herman Melville, “Canto XVII”, in Walter E. Bezanson, editor, Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land […], New York, N.Y.: Hendricks House, published 1960, →OCLC, part I (Jerusalem)...

Forms of imbay

third-person singular presentimbays
present participleimbaying
past participleimbayed
pastimbayed

Origin of imbay

From im- + bay.

Questions about imbay

What is imbay the archaic form of?
Imbay is the archaic form of embay.

Words near imbay in the dictionary

  1. imbathes
  2. imbathing
  3. imbats
  4. imbauba
  5. imbaubas
  6. imbay
  7. imbayed
  8. imbaying
  9. imbays
  10. imbe
  11. imbecile

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: imbay (page history and authors); embay (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: “imbay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/imbay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.