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imprecate

verb /ˈɪmpɹəkeɪt/

  1. To call down by prayer, as something hurtful or calamitous.

    transitive

    To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething sea; [...]

Where it comes from

Borrowed from Latin imprecātus, perfect active participle of imprecor (“to invoke (good or evil) upon, pray to, call upon”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from in- (“upon”) + precor (“to pray”).

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry imprecate (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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