incense

From Middle English encens, from Old French encens (“sweet-smelling substance”) from Late Latin incensum (“burnt incense”, literally “something burnt”), neuter past participle of incendō (“I set on fire”). Compare incendiary. Cognate with Spanish encender and incienso.

• Noun:
  • enPR: ĭn'sĕns, IPA^(key): /ˈɪnsɛns/

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• Verb:
  • enPR: ĭnsĕns', IPA^(key): /ɪnˈsɛns/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• Rhymes: (verb) -ɛns

incense (countable and uncountable, plural incenses)

1. A perfume used in the rites of various religions.
2. (figurative) Homage; adulation.

• joss stick, incense stick

• incense boat
• incense cedar

• frankincense

incense (third-person singular simple present incenses, present participle incensing, simple past and past participle incensed)

1. (transitive) To anger or infuriate.

   I think it would incense him to learn the truth.

2. (archaic) To incite, stimulate.
3. (transitive) To offer incense to.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Chaucer to this entry?)

4. (transitive) To perfume with, or as with, incense.
   • c. 1603 (date written), Iohn Marston, The Malcontent, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for William Aspley, […], published 1604, OCLC 1224733829, Act III, scene ii:

     To haue her bound, incenſed with wanton ſweetes, / Her vaines fild hie with heating delicates, / […] / O Ithaca can chaſteſt Penelope hold out.

   • 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, OCLC 1026761782, (please specify the book or page number):

     Neither, for the future, shall any man or woman, self-styled noble, be incensed,—foolishly fumigated with incense, in Church; as the wont has been.

5. (obsolete) To set on fire; to inflame; to kindle; to burn.
   • [1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, OCLC 614803194; The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], volume (please specify the book number), new edition, London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843, OCLC 987451361:

     Twelve Trojan princes wait on thee, and labour to incense / Thy glorious heap of funeral.

• Nicenes

incēnse

1. vocative masculine singular of incēnsus

• “incense”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• incense in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• incense in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette
• “incense”, in The Perseus Project (1999) Perseus Encyclopedia‎
• “incense”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers