To make or become brutish, cruel, or beast-like; to degrade someone into savagery.
From em- (cause to become) plus brute (from Latin brutus, meaning irrational animal). The word emerged in the 16th-17th centuries to describe the process of becoming savage or losing one's humanity.
Paradise Lost uses 'embruted' to describe how humans fall into depravity—it captures the idea that cruelty isn't natural but something you have to become. The word suggests a transformation from civil to savage.
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