upwreath

Verb

upwreath (third-person singular simple present upwreaths, present participle upwreathing, simple past and past participle upwreathed)

1. (intransitive) To rise with a curling motion; to curl upward, as smoke does.
   • In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
     Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe’s trim bole,
     His [the poet’s] gifted ken can see
     Phantoms of sublimity.1822, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Apologia pro Vita Sua” in Ernest Hartley Coleridge (ed.), The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912, p. 345
   • And around it columns of smoke, upwreathing,
     Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething
     Caldron, that glowed,
     And overflowed
     With the black tar, heated for the sheathing.1850, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Building of the Ship”, in The Seaside and the Fireside, Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, page 18
2. (transitive) To twist or entwine (something) upward.
   • […] coiled around his crest, a dragon long
     Upwreathed its golden spires the wavy plumes among.1830, Reginald Heber, “Morte d'Arthur: A Fragment,” Canto 2, stanza 14, in The Poetical Works of Reginald Heber, London: Frederick Warne, no date, p. 210
   • By thy upwreathed locks that scent the wind,
     O! hear my prayer, and aid; for Myrrha is unkind!1861, Joseph Noel Paton, “Hymn to Aphrodite”, in Poems by a Painter, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, page 133
3. (transitive) To send (something) upward in curls.
   • And your fair vestals, watchful, swing
     Sweet incense for their welcoming,
     The while our thuribles shall be
     Upwreathing odorous thoughts to thee;1911, C. G. Blanden, “Redwood”, in The Upper Trail, Chicago: The Alderbrink Press, page 200