engross

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To take up all of someone's attention and interest.

   The mystery novel engrossed her for the entire weekend.

2. 2
   verb

   To devote yourself fully to something.

   He engrossed himself in his research for months.

Simplified etymology

Engross comes from the Latin phrase in grosso, meaning “wholesale,” ultimately from grossus, “large.” It originally meant to buy an entire stock of goods in order to resell it at a monopoly price.

From Middle English engrossen, from Anglo-Norman engrosser (“to gather in large quantities, draft something in final form”); partly from the phrase en gros (“in bulk, in quantity, at wholesale”), from en- + gros; and partly from Medieval Latin ingrossō (“thicken, write something large and in bold lettering”, v.), from in- + grossus (“great, big, thick”), from Old High German grōz (“big, thick, coarse”), from Proto-West Germanic *graut, from Proto-Germanic *grautaz (“large, great, thick, coarse grained, unrefined”), from Proto-Indo-European *ghrewə- (“to fell, put down, fall in”). More at in-,…

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External links

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