Definition of "engrail"

engrail¹

/ɪŋˈɡɹeɪl/

verb
third-person singular simple present engrails, present participle engrailing, simple past and past participle engrailed
1. (transitive) To make rough.
2. (intransitive) To form an edging or border; to run in curved or indented lines.
  Quotations
  Fine gold engrail'd adorns the figur'd floor
  a. 1718, Thomas Parnell, Solomon

engrail²

/ɪŋˈɡɹeɪl/

verb
third-person singular simple present engrails, present participle engrailing, simple past and past participle engrailed
1. (transitive) To variegate or spot, as with hail.
  Quotations
  a caldron new engrailed with twenty huesThe spelling has been modernized.
  , Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter; republished as The Iliads of Homer, Prince of Poets, […], new edition, volumes (please specify the book number), London: Charles Knight and Co., […], 1843,
2. (transitive, heraldry, archaic) To indent with small curves.
  Quotations
  He crossed through the high grass and went up the slope, climbing with handholds in the new turf until he gained the crest and turned to look down on the river and the city beyond, casting a gray glance along that varied world, the pieced plowland, the houses, the odd grady of the small metropolis against the green and blooming hills and the flat bow of the river like a serpentine trench poured with dull slag save where the wind engrailed its face and it shimmered lightly in the sun.
  1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 120