enisle · verb — to make into an island. It carries an Arena rating of 1556, earned across 6 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, enisle ranks #1,088 of 17,205 for The Improbable, #2,162 of 17,162 for Most Elegant Words, #2,576 of 17,163 for Most Beautiful Words, #2,836 of 17,187 for Most Malleable Words.
Why “enisle” is a great word
To make into an island or to isolate. Formed within English c. 1600 from the prefix en- (meaning "in, into, to make") and the noun isle. Unlike "isolate" (a general term for setting apart) or "sequester" (which suggests a deliberate, often temporary withdrawal), to enisle is to impose a profound, physical solitude. It is the lighthouse on its wave-lashed rock, the solitary house at the end of the causeway when the tide is high, or the quiet scholar in his tower of books—each a continent unto itself, surrounded by the silent sea of everything else, unreachable not by malice but by the slow rising of waters.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
From en- + isle.
verb
- To make into an island.e.g.“[…] long before England itself was enisled by the sea.” — 1930, Walter De la Mare, Desert Islands and Robinson Crusoe, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, page 118:
- To isolate.e.g.“[…] no reply / Comes from the vast, enisling sphere / Of spirit, limitless, divine, / So far from me, so strangely mine.” — 1876, Edmond Holmes, “After Death”, in Poems, London: Henry S. King & Co., page 82:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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