embattle
1 Americanverb (used with object)
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to arrange in order of battle; prepare for battle; arm.
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to fortify (a town, camp, etc.).
verb (used with object)
verb
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to deploy (troops) for battle
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to strengthen or fortify (a position, town, etc)
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to provide (a building) with battlements
Etymology
Origin of embattle1
1350–1400; Middle English embatailen < Middle French embataillier. See em- 1, battle 1
Origin of embattle2
First recorded in 1350–1400, embattle is from the Middle English word embatailen. See em- 1, battle 2
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Those raids have further threatened a health care system in the embattle territory that is struggling to cope with the fallout from the war.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 30, 2024
Hunting out two aggressive spiders, he would embattle them and watch with glee through a magnifying glass.
From Time Magazine Archive
He pursued his way over the craigs; through the valley, and across the river, to the cliffs which embattle the garden of Ellerslie.
From The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
And Douglas found the forces that were to embattle him drawing up in line.
From Children of the Market Place by Edgar Lee Masters
In England generally castles belonged only to the Crown or to great nobles, and no gentleman was suffered to castellate or embattle his walls without a special licence from the Crown.
From Cornwall by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
That kind of attention isn’t on just him but also on Indian Americans in even higher-profile jobs, such as, say, the first Indian American director of the FBI, the chronically embattled Kash Patel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
The second is unique to him: dealing with the increasingly uncertain fate of the embattled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the orchestra’s home since 1971.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
At the moment, however, the president is embattled.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026
Acme’s success is the latest humiliation for embattled Warner Bros.
From Slate ● Sep. 1, 2026
Through the smoke we saw other launches put in from other brigs and sloops slipping toward the embattled docks.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Oh! she could have lingered there forever! and hardly did she know what it was to draw any but sighs of bliss till she saw the towers of Paris embattling the horizon.
From The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
Then in embattling his Legions, he places the Saints here, and the Angels there, as if one were the main Battle of Infantry, and the other the Wings of Cavalry.
From The History of the Devil As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts by Daniel Defoe
The portly peltry of a goat; its horns embattling its effigy head; its mouth the nozzle; and its long beard flowed to its jet-black hoofs.
From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I by Herman Melville
But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause—such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy?
From Moby Dick, or, the whale by Herman Melville
He organized it piecemeal, on a class basis, instead of embattling it as a whole.
From William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
