Word of the day: engross

I’ve been meaning for some time to look up the verb engross. The word turns out to be full of surprises. In the Oxford English Dictionary , the earliest meanings (from 1304) have to do with handwriting:

To write in large letters; chiefly, and now almost exclusively, to write in a peculiar character appropriate to legal documents; hence, to write out or express in legal form.

A citation from Samuel Pepys’s Diary (1664–65): “The story of the several Archbishops of Canterbury, engrossed in vellum.”

A second set of meanings (from 1400) have to do with dealing with things “in the gross”:

To buy up wholesale; esp. to buy up the whole stock, or as much as possible, of (a commodity) for the purpose of “regrating” or retailing it at a monopoly price. Obsolete exc. Historical .

A third set of meanings (from 1561) have to do with rendering things “gross, dense, or bulky.” So let us move on, or back, to the second set of meanings. That’s where to find the engross that we know and find so engaging (from 1709):

To absorb or engage the whole attention or all the faculties of.

A lovely partial sentence from William Black’s novel The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton (1872) is among the citations: “He was entirely engrossed in attending to her wants.”

Yes, attend, bub, attend.

The three sets of meanings come into English in three ways, says the OED : from the Anglo-Norman engrosser , “to write in large letters”; from the French en gros , “in the lump, by wholesale”; and from the French engrosser , “to make big, thick, or gross”.

If you’re still reading, you must be engrossed by this post, as I was when writing it. But this post isn’t nearly as engrossing as Bad Bunny’s halftime show.