Emily Dickinson Lexicon

EN-GAGE-MENT, n.

1. The act of pawning, pledging, or making liable for debt.
2. Obligation by agreement or contract. Men are often more ready to make engagements than to fulfill them.
3. Adherence to a party or cause; partiality. Swift.
4. Occupation; employmemt of the attention. Play, by too long or constant engagement, becomes like an employment or profession. Rogers.
5. Employment in fighting; the conflict of armies or fleets; battle; a general action; appropriately the conflict of whole armies or fleets, but applied to actions between small squadrons or single ships, rarely to a fight between detachments of land forces.
6. Obligation; motive; that which engages. Hammond.