[f. TENT sb.1: a number of unconnected uses.]
1. intr. To abide or live in a tent; to encamp. Also to tent it.
1856. Kane, 2nd Grinnell Exp., I. xxvii. 357. We will be gone for some days probably, tenting it in the open air.
1867. Lady Herbert, Cradle L., 154. Our travellers tented on a small level sward just outside the Convent-gates.
1881. Mrs. Holman-Hunt, Childr. Jerus., 189. Do you think we shall ever go tenting again, mother?
1893. Scribner’s Mag., June, 703/2. The river crew is tenting out and clearing the stream.
b. fig. To dwell temporarily; to sojourn, to tabernacle; to have one’s abode; of a thing: to have its seat, ‘reside.’
1607. Shaks., Cor., III. ii. 116. The smiles of Knaues Tent in my cheekes, and Schoole-boyes Teares take vp The Glasses of my sight.
1751. R. Shirra, in Rem. (1850), 52. He tented or tabernacled in flesh among us.
1871. Macduff, Mem. Patmos, xxii. 305. The Word came and dwelt (or lit. ‘tented’) among us.
1893. E. G. Hirsch, in Barrows, Parl. Relig., II. 1304. Wherever man may tent, there also will curve upward the burning incense of his sacrifice.
2. trans. To cover or canopy as with a tent.
1838. Mrs. Browning, Seraphim, II. 604. The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky Floats backward as by a sudden wind.
1883. Ld. R. Gower, My Remin., I. xx. 410. A garden flanked by colonnades and covered passages had been tented in.
3. To accommodate, put up, or lodge in tents. Also fig.
1863. Ld. Lytton, Ring Amasis, II. 81. Powers we can neither summon nor dismiss, are camped upon the brain and tented in the veins of men.
1869. E. A. Parkes, Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3), 481. The men should be tented, the tents should be well ventilated.
1882. Armstrong, Garland fr. Greece, Orithyia, 8. I have tented the nymphs of the rills in pavilions of frozen spray.
1898. Daily News, 9 March, 3/2. All officers are tented in the same manner as the men.
† 4. To pitch or spread (a tent); to put up, fix up, stretch, as a tent or its canvas. Obs.
1553. Douglas’s Æneis, VIII. x. 23. That from the top of the hillys hyght The army all thai mycht se at a sight With tentis tentit [ed. Small, stentit] strekand to the plane.
1634. W. Wood, New Eng. Prosp., I. ii. (1865), 7. By good fires they sleepe as well and quietly (having their mayne sayle tented at their backes, to shelter them from the winde) as if they were at home.
