embed

Formsembeds, embedding, embedded

Pluralembeds

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To include something within surrounding matter, so that it is enclosed by the material around it.

   Manufacturers embed sensors in the pavement to track traffic flow.

   The glacier had embedded huge boulders in the valley floor.

   Similarinsert, implant, lodge, bury

   Note

   Here the stress shifts from the bedding to the inclusion, and the surrounding matter need not be solid at all. Paired with with, the verb takes people as its object: a paper embeds a reporter with an infantry division, and a film embeds the viewer with a squad of soldiers. That with-construction, rather than in, is the one behind the journalist noun.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To lay something in surrounding material, settling it in place as if into a bed.

   Masons embed each course of bricks in a fresh bed of mortar.

   The crew embedded the drainage pipes in gravel before filling in the trench.

   Similarset, bed, lay, fix, sink

   Note

   The literal sense, built plainly from em- and bed: to put something into material that holds it the way a bed holds a sleeper. The spelling imbed also occurs, as in Thomas Carlyle's The Life of John Sterling (1851), where Coleridge's gifts lie "imbedded" in a lax character. The verb usually takes in: embedded in clay, in mortar, in the macadam of a street.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To encapsulate a digital object, such as an image or video, within another document or data file.

   Web developers embed interactive maps in contact pages with a few lines of code.

   The newsletter embeds a short survey in each issue.

   Similarinsert, include, incorporate

   Note

   Computing's version of the verb puts one file's content inside another, such as a chart from a spreadsheet carried within a word-processor document. The reader meets the object in place, inside the host document, without opening it separately. The usual pattern is embed X in or within Y, and the object that results has its own name: the digital-object noun.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A journalist assigned to travel with a military unit or a political campaign, reporting on it from within.

   As an embed with the battalion, he filed dispatches from the front lines.

   The campaign gave its embeds unusual access to strategy meetings.

   Note

   A shortening of embedded reporter and a term from journalism. The noun grew out of the "embed with" construction and keeps that preposition, as in an embed with the battalion. It takes an ordinary plural, so a campaign can speak of its embeds. The context, military or political, shows which kind of assignment is meant.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A digital object, such as a video or social media post, contained within another, often a document or web page.

   The article includes a tweet embed showing the senator's original statement.

   Editors removed several embeds after the source videos were taken down.

   Note

   The noun for what the computing verb produces. It often stands at the end of a compound that names its source first: a video embed, a tweet embed, an HTML5 video embed with controls and autoplay. An embed can stay tied to its content. Richard Rutter, Andy Budd and Simon Collison's Blog Design Solutions (2006) notes that changing an embed updates every page that includes it.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A piece of computer hardware built into another physical object, often a larger IT device.

   The router contains an embed that handles encryption separately from the main processor.

   Diagnostic embeds inside the turbines report vibration data in real time.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To define a one-to-one function from one set into another that preserves certain properties of the first set within its image inside the second.

   Mathematicians embed the rational numbers in the real numbers to study them inside a complete number system.

   Cayley's theorem embeds every finite group in a group of permutations.

   Note

   In mathematics the verb names a map, not a placement: one structure is carried one-to-one into another so that its image keeps the properties that matter. Which properties those are depends on the branch of mathematics. The idiom is often passive and takes in, as in "the torus S¹×S¹ can be embedded in ℝ³."

8. 8
   nouncountable

   An element of an advertisement or similar media that functions as a subliminal message.

   The lecturer pointed to an alleged embed hidden in the ice cubes of a liquor ad.

   He spent hours searching vintage magazine ads for embeds aimed at the subconscious.

   Note

   A term from the critique of advertising, where it usually arrives as a claim rather than a demonstration. Sammy Richard Danna's Advertising and Popular Culture (1992) reports allegations that ads for gin, scotch and cigarettes contain embeds "surreptitiously placed to induce purchase." Careful writers hedge the word, as in an alleged embed, because whether the hidden element exists is often the very question.

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