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Impale   Listen
verb
Impale  v. t.  (past & past part. impaled; pres. part. impaling)  
1.
To pierce with a pale; to put to death by fixing on a sharp stake. See Empale. "Then with what life remains, impaled, and left To writhe at leisure round the bloody stake."
2.
To inclose, as with pales or stakes; to surround. "Impale him with your weapons round about." "Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire."
3.
(Her.) To join, as two coats of arms on one shield, palewise; hence, to join in honorable mention. "Ordered the admission of St. Patrick to the same to be matched and impaled with the blessed Virgin in the honor thereof."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Impale" Quotes from Famous Books



... the place. The spring is gushing forth, The bushes cover it. If I stand here, I can impale the man who stoops to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... it was a look of incredulity chiefly; yet I could see nothing to impale for improbability in the play as far as it had gone. I was but lightly attending, for my own purposes, as you youngsters skim your betters for review; but thus far the situation struck me as at once feasible and promising. Also it seemed not a little familiar ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... given clean, with scientific skill and swiftness, and the blow once given, she would retire to her own room and let her victim find what solace she could in solitude. Norma was not wantonly cruel; she could impale a foe, but she had no desire to witness his contortions. After a death-scene she shrank from the grewsomeness of burial; she preferred a decent drop-curtain ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... his fork down into the earth as if to impale fierce, evil thoughts with its tines, "I'm surperrised at you. Good! What, to go stealing an' portching to feed up a wicked old woman, who spends all her time trying to curse. That's a shocking ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... to put my hand once more Into a rusty can And turn those squirmy creatures o'er Like nuggets in a pan; And for a big one, once again, With eager eyes I'd look, As did a boy I knew, and then Impale it on a hook. ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... to the needs and uses of the hearer, but so remote as rarely to be noticed, except by that very small fraction of any customary congregation who may chance to have an interest in such doings,—some of whom watch the clergyman as they would the entomologist, running down a truth that he may impale it, and add one more specimen to his well-ordered collection of common and of uncommon bugs? Our neighbors in the South do better than this; for they hunt with the lasso, and never throw the noose except to capture ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... me to impale Mr. Dexter on the horns of a dilemma. Either it is too late in the day to discuss woman's education, or it is not. If the latter, why did he say it is? And if the former, why did he begin discussing it? That ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... to find him a way of escape. If he had only had a short bayonet fixed at the end of his gun, that he might hold it ready with the butt upon the ground, and the point at an angle of forty-five degrees, so that the lion might at its first bound alight upon it, and impale itself, just as it had been known to do upon the long, sharp, slightly curved prongs of the black antelope, piercing itself through and through, and meeting the fate intended ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... interruption of the considerate hearing he was giving to Amiruddin. The ticca-gharry ponies were almost spent, and any resolute hand could have impelled them away from the carriage-pole with which the roans threatened to impale their wretched sides. The front wheel, however, made him heroic, going off at a tangent into a cloth-merchant's shop, and precipitating a clash while he still clung to the reins. The door flew open on the under side and Hilda fell through, grasping ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... him. He starts a collection merely that he may have a plausible excuse for doing something he ought not to do. He goes in for birds' eggs merely that he may be allowed to risk his bones and tear his clothes in climbing; for butterflies, that he may be encouraged to poison and impale; for stamps...really, I do not know why he, why any sane creature goes in for stamps. It follows that he has no real love of his collection and soon abandons it for something else. The sincere collector, how different! His hobby has a solid basis ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm



Words linked to "Impale" :   pierce, pin, transfix, empale, kill



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