Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To bind with or as if with chains.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To chain; fasten with a chain; bind or hold in or as if in chains; hold in bondage; enthrall.
- To hold fast; restrain; confine: as, to
enchain the attention. - To link together; connect.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To bind with a chain; to hold in chains.
- transitive verb To hold fast; to confine.
- transitive verb To link together; to connect.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
restrain with, or as if with,chains
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb restrain or bind with chains
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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'enchain' a rational conversation, but nothing could I get out of him but rhapsodies about you in the frightfullest English that I ever heard out of a human head!
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Yet man can enchain elephants and employ them, according to their own wishes. '
The Sultana's Dream Peggy 2009
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But to dismiss it as unnatural is to forbid it, drive it even further underground, and enchain the world as the perpetually dangerous place that George F. Will and his "realistic" reactionary cohorts suppose it to be.
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This was all posted last evening at bloggerspot, buzznet had the chikungunya flu, but it recovered and that is the magic of haldane, gives you pleasure and also pain .. and our balls to buzznet enchain. .it pours love when it acid rains. .multi colored light and blood stained window panes .. posted 11 oct 2006
2006 December 18 « bollywoods most wanted photographerno1 2006
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This was all posted last evening at bloggerspot, buzznet had the chikungunya flu, but it recovered and that is the magic of haldane, gives you pleasure and also pain .. and our balls to buzznet enchain. .it pours love when it acid rains. .multi colored light and blood stained window panes .. posted 11 oct 2006
Bandra Bizarre Road « bollywoods most wanted photographerno1 2006
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Whilst hand with hand and arm with arm about their necks enchain
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Ideal more credible than the Actual: to enchain our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets, our tears, for a mere brain-born
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But though the books were never so interesting, and never so full of novelty to Tom, they could not so enchain him, in those mysterious chambers, as to render him unconscious, for a moment, of the lightest sound.
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Ideal more credible than the Actual: to enchain our hearts, to command our hopes, our regrets, our tears, for a mere brain-born
Burlesques 2006
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On the other hand, in the nation at large there was growing up a feeling that at the top there were a set of giants — Titans — who, without heart or soul, and without any understanding of or sympathy with the condition of the rank and file, were setting forth to enchain and enslave them.
The Titan 2004
qroqqa commented on the word enchain
With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.
—Johnson, preface to his Dictionary
Chiquitita, tell me what's wrong
You're enchained by your own sorrow
—ABBA
October 24, 2008