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.
   • 1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 281:

     When the folding-doors were on such solemn occasions thrown open, and the new Abbot appeared on the threshold in full-blown dignity, with ring and mitre, and dalmatique and crosier, his hoary standard-bearers and his juvenile dispensers of incense preceding him, and the venerable train of monks behind him, with all besides which could announce the supreme authority to which he was now raised, his appearance was a signal for the magnificent jubilate to rise from the organ and music-loft, and to be joined by the corresponding bursts of Alleluiah from the whole assembled congregation.

2. (figuratively) Homage; adulation.

• joss stick, incense stick

• 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, 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 […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (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; The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], new edition, volumes (please specify the book number), London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843, →OCLC:

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

     The spelling has been modernized.

• 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