from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
transitive verb To make beloved or very sympathetic.
from The Century Dictionary.
To make dear in feeling; render valued or beloved; attach; bind by ties of affection.
To engage by attractive qualities; win by endearment.
To make dear or costly; raise the price of.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
transitive verb To make dear or beloved.
transitive verb rare To raise the price or cost of; to make costly or expensive.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
verb make attractive or lovable
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From en- + dear.
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Examples
What endeared him to those of us in the center and center left -- and I use the word endear with some trepidation when it comes to McCain -- was an honesty and unpredictability that made him seem like he was capable of rising above the GOP partisan fray when it was important for the sake of the nation.
I make chuse of you to inform your Master, who's the capablest person under God to do for them, which will with other infinit titles endear you to your fast friends in Scotland, and especially to your
Such comments are unlikely to endear him to Liverpool's under-fire players, which is a shame as they're crying out for a bit of the mongrel that is the Afghan Hound lookalike's stock-in-trade.
And while this sort of depiction makes for, as my agent gently put it, "a great character," it does not exactly endear one to said mother when the book is published.
Nothing better illustrated the turbulent state of civil-military relations during this period than the hostility on the part of the uniformed military toward President Bill Clinton, whose antimilitary stance as a young man during the Vietnam War years did not endear him to soldiers.
And while this sort of depiction makes for, as my agent gently put it, "a great character," it does not exactly endear one to said mother when the book is published.
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