[‘ A spell of anger or strong feeling; a fit of passion. Also as a mass noun: anger, fury.']
Pronunciation: Brit. /ɪmˈpɔːtm(ə)nt/, ɛmˈpɔːtm(ə)nt, U.S. /ᵻmˈpɔrtm(ə)nt/, ɛmˈpɔrtm(ə)nt
Forms: 16– *emportment*, 19– *emportement*.
Etymology: < French /emportement/ fit of passion or rage (1661 in the passage translated in 1663, or earlier) < /emporter/ (reflexive) to be carried away by anger or passion (1632; 10th cent. in Old French in transitive use in sense ‘to transport (something), to take (something) away’ < /em/ em- prefix + /porter/ port v.2) + /-ment/ -ment suffix.
Now rare.
A spell of anger or strong feeling; a fit of passion. Also as a mass noun: anger, fury.
1663 J. D. tr. H. de Péréfixe de Beaumont /Hist. Henry IV/ ii. 136 Knowing that it was the ill Government of his Predecessor which had altered their Affections, and had furnished them with the pretext..to cause their emportments [Fr. /emportemens/], he omitted no diligence nor no goodness which might reduce them sweetly to their Duty.
1675 tr. C. V. de Saint-Réal /Conspiracy Spaniards against Venice/ 105 The Ambassador..answer’d with all the Emportment of an honest Man, whose Honour is unjustly attacqu’d.
/a/1734 R. North /Examen/ (1740) 653 Lay aside emportments so justly provoked.
1744 R. North & M. North /Life Sir D. North & Rev. J. North/ 68 At which the Ambassador and his Friend were in a furious Emportment.
1902 /Era/ (Cornell Univ.) *34* 34 Both had ungovernable tempers,..both threw off the marriage yoke with emportment, both complained bitterly against their own load.
1923 J. M. Murry /Pencillings/ 211 He had..a point of view which would have enabled him to see the comic side of Flaubert’s anti-bourgeois emportement.