Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To ornament with needlework; embroider.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To adorn with figures of needlework, or by sewing on ornaments; embroider: as, “a broidered coat,” Ex. xxviii. 4.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb Archaic To embroider.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb archaic To embroider.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb decorate with needlework

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration (influenced by Middle English broiden, braided) of Middle English brouderen, from Old French brosder, brouder; see embroider.]

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Examples

  • The sword broider'd was burn'd up, so hot was that blood,

    The Tale of Beowulf Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats Anonymous

  • With 'broider'd coat and lace-frill'd throat, and jewels rich and rare,

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 Various

  • Verily not, said Habundia, nor why thou art not clad in the fair green gown which thou didst broider; for whiles I have seen the witch flaunting it on the wooden ugly body of her, and thou wouldst not wear it after she had cursed it with her foulness.

    The Water of the Wondrous Isles 2007

  • The women of his day were no doubt obstreperous and extravagant, and hence his famous but perfectly ineffectual teaching that they should not "broider their hair, or wear gold or silver or costly array," and that they shouldn't talk in meeting, and if they wanted to know anything, ask their husbands, and drink of their intellectual superiority.

    Fair to Look Upon Mary Belle Freeley

  • I have tried to broider it with gold, I have tried to hang silver-bells upon the drooping corners thereof.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 61, November, 1862 Various

  • The curse of foot binding does not fall so heavily upon women like myself, who may sit and broider the whole day through, or, if needs must travel, can be borne upon the shoulders of their chair bearers, but it is a bane to the poor girl whose parents hope to have one in the family who may marry above their station, and hoping thus, bind her feet.

    My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard Elizabeth Cooper 1911

  • There came to them none of those happy little adventures, bright gleams from the unexpected, which we broider and magnify as the years go by, and store at last in our soul as the one inexhaustible treasure acquired by the smiling memory of life.

    Wisdom and Destiny Maurice Maeterlinck 1905

  • She would have followed Bacon to the death, and sat up all night to broider herself a kerchief.

    The Heart's Highway: A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century 1900

  • And ’broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;

    Mother and Poet 1895

  • She would have followed Bacon to the death, and sat up all night to broider herself a kerchief.

    The Heart's Highway Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman 1891

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