Emvowel
//ɪmˈvaʊ.əl// verb
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Verb
- 1 To replace a portion of a person's name with a dash in printing, in order to avoid libel. dated, humorous
"And as for all the words I embowel, or rather emvowel, I will never ſo mangle them, but they ſhall be all as well known as if they retained every vowel in them."
Example
More examples"And as for all the words I embowel, or rather emvowel, I will never ſo mangle them, but they ſhall be all as well known as if they retained every vowel in them."
Etymology
Coined by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) as a jocular alteration of embowel (“disembowel”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.