emprise

noun

em·​prise em-ˈprīz 

: an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise

Did you know?

Someone who engages in emprises undertakes much, and the word became established in English with the chivalrous undertakings of brave knights. Fourteenth-century author Geoffrey Chaucer used emprise to describe one such knight in "The Franklin's Tale" (one of the stories in The Canterbury Tales): "There was a knight that loved and went through pains / To serve a lady in his best way; / And many a labor, many a great emprise, / He wrought for his lady before she was won."

Synonyms

• adventure
• experience
• exploit
• gest
• geste
• happening
• time

Examples of emprise in a Sentence

he always seems to be having the sort of high emprise that most of us experience only in our dreams

Word History

Etymology

Middle English, undertaking, from Anglo-French, from emprendre to undertake, from Vulgar Latin *imprehendere, from Latin in- + prehendere to seize — more at get

First Known Use

13th century, in the meaning defined above

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