imprecate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
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(intr) to swear, curse, or blaspheme
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(tr) to invoke or bring down (evil, a curse, etc)
to imprecate disaster on the ship
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(tr) to put a curse on
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of imprecate
First recorded in 1605–15; from Latin imprecātus, past participle of imprecārī “to invoke, pray to or for,” equivalent to im- “in” + prec- “pray” + -ātus past participle suffix; see origin at im- 1, pray, -ate 1
Explanation
To imprecate is to deliver a curse or verbally attack someone. You might imprecate a curse against a rival sports team, or even against a sibling. The verb imprecate is an old-fashioned way to say "curse," meaning either to wish harm or evil on someone, or simply to swear at them. If you're mad enough to say, "Curse you!" or "May your bed be full of fleas!" when your brother annoys you, you imprecate him. The Latin root is imprecationem, "an invoking of evil," from imprecari, "invoke or call down upon."
Vocabulary lists containing imprecate
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:
But now there is scarcely a tongue in all New England that does not imprecate curses on his name.
From Grandfather's Chair by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"I know his features," he exclaimed with indignation: "I assert his innocence; and I imprecate the same, a juster fate, against the authors of his death."
From History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5 by Henry Hart Milman
There was nothing for him to resent, nothing for him to imprecate but his own folly.
From The Alaskan by James Oliver Curwood
To be a thorough expert in dog-training a man must be able to imprecate freely and with considerable variety in at least three different languages.
From The Great Lone Land A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America by William Francis Butler
Bowing my head to think—to pray—to imprecate, I lost all sense of time and place.
From Heralds of Empire Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade by Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
Should we grant that Moses here imprecated on himself the greatest evil, a sense of other people's sins, and not a sense of his own sins, was the occasion.
From Sermons on Various Important Subjects by Andrew Lee
He abstained from any violence to his wife and child, though he had imprecated many curses on the sons of Atreus: he neither hurt Teucer, nor even Ulysses himself.
From The Works of Horace by Horace
The Padma Puran ascribes the origin of the particular form under which this symbol is represented, to the effects of a curse imprecated on Shiva by Bhrigu.
From Phallic Miscellanies Facts and Phases of Ancient and Modern Sex Worship, as Illustrated Chiefly in the Religions of India by Hargrave Jennings
They scolded, railed and imprecated, Abased, defied and execrated; With malediction, ban and curse They simply went from bad to worse; Carramba!
From The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair Their Observations and Triumphs by C. M. (Charles McClellan) Stevens
It bewailed the fallen honours of the Abencerrages, and imprecated vengeance on their oppressors.
From Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists by Washington Irving
He throws effort into this record, whining, yammering, imprecating, imitating himself fabulously.
From New York Times ● Sep. 19, 2011
Thousands of pleading, imprecating letters from cloak-and-suit men the country over forced him to change his mind.
From Time Magazine Archive
Her two hands shot up, dropped, shot up again, imprecating, cursing the world, the sky, the whole scheme of the universe, it seemed.
From A Spirit in Prison by Robert Smythe Hichens
Voices were indeed occasionally heard invoking the blessings of the gods upon them, or imprecating curses upon the head of the scourge Aurelian.
From Zenobia or, the Fall of Palmyra by William Ware
By imprecating unhallowed curses on the royal family.
From The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. by Euripides
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.
