to engage
252
9.9
- verb
- /ɪnˈɡeɪdʒ/
- Archaic
:
prometer en matrimonio
- The matchmaker skillfully engaged many eligible young women to promising suitors in the village.
- get engaged
- become engaged
- couples become engaged
Nick, where's the best place to get engaged?
- Nick, where's the best place to get engaged?
- So I would leave for six months, come back, got engaged, leave for six months, came back, got married.
Examples
-
In the days leading up to what would become her historic vanishing act, it was rumored that 18-year-old Justine Waters had just become engaged to Prince Achmed Mustafi of Jordan.
-
Once, not long after we got engaged, we were in New York.
Academic text (2011) -
So I would leave for six months, come back, got engaged, leave for six months, came back, got married.
-
You guys, uh... you are engaged, though, right?
-
We got engaged the day before I left.
-
My mom met him six months after the murder, and they got engaged and married real quick.
-
Two years previously, she had been engaged to him for several months.
Academic text (1994) -
" Aunt May told me that you were engaged to be married."
Fiction book (1993) -
I'm a newly engaged woman, remember?
-
I was engaged, but...
Synonyms
11
9.6
To promise two people will marry each other in the future
To formally promise that two people will marry
Idioms
Phrasal Verbs
How Formal
Surface Forms
Morphology
engage = gage (transparent) = en + gage
This archaic sense ('to betroth') follows directly from 'to give as a pledge' (en + gage), so the derivation is clear if the base is known.
Etymology
Engage once meant to give someone as a 'promise' to another, so people could be 'engaged' to be married. That's why an old meaning of engage is to betroth or arrange a marriage.