EMBROIDER

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does embroider mean? 

• EMBROIDER (verb)
  The verb EMBROIDER has 2 senses:

1. decorate with needlework

2. add details to

  Familiarity information: EMBROIDER used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EMBROIDER (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they embroider    ... he / she / it embroiders   
Past simple: embroidered   
Past participle: embroidered   
-ing form: embroidering   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Decorate with needlework

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Synonyms:

broider; embroider

Hypernyms (to "embroider" is one way to...):

adorn; beautify; decorate; embellish; grace; ornament (make more attractive by adding ornament, colour, etc.)

"Embroider" entails doing...:

run up; sew; sew together; stitch (fasten by sewing; do needlework)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "embroider"):

faggot; fagot (ornament or join (fabric) by faggot stitch)

purl (embroider with gold or silver thread)

purl (edge or border with gold or silver embroidery)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sentence example:

They embroider the cape

Derivation:

embroiderer (someone who ornaments with needlework)

embroidery (decorative needlework)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Add details to

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

aggrandise; aggrandize; blow up; dramatise; dramatize; embellish; embroider; lard; pad

Hypernyms (to "embroider" is one way to...):

amplify; exaggerate; hyperbolise; hyperbolize; magnify; overdraw; overstate (to enlarge beyond bounds or the truth)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "embroider"):

glorify (cause to seem more splendid)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s something with something

Sentence example:

They won't embroider the story

Derivation:

embroidery (elaboration of an interpretation by the use of decorative (sometimes fictitious) detail)

 Context examples 

And the little tailor hastened to cut himself a girdle, stitched it, and embroidered on it in large letters: Seven at one stroke!

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Take your light gloves and the embroidered handkerchief.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

His vest was of black velvet, open at the top to show an embroidered shirt-front, with a high, smooth, white cravat above it, which kept his neck for ever on the stretch.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He had evidently been in his bed when the alarm had broken out, for he wore a foppish, embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A gold-embroidered belt of knighthood encircled his loins, with his arms, five roses gules on a field argent, cunningly worked upon the clasp.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The ladies and courtiers were all most magnificently clad; so that the spot they stood upon seemed to resemble a petticoat spread upon the ground, embroidered with figures of gold and silver.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The German gentlemen embroider, I know, but darning hose is another thing and not so pretty.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

In the rapid glance Alleyne saw that he had white doeskin gloves, a curling white feather in his flat velvet cap, and a broad gold, embroidered baldric across his bosom.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)