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Does imprecate admit of a direct or indirect object or both? What prepositions must be used? Examples of prepositions don't exhaust, and the Google Books contains against, not mentioned on OED.

This is a rare verb, yet there are instances of both uses:

Direct object:

Indirect object:

Source: P184, How the Law Works, Gary Slapper

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The OED cites examples of absolute or intransitive use of the verb imprecate, from the 17th century, now obsolete.

In your citation, the man who used the obsolete intransitive form of imprecate is a medical doctor writing a treatise on the Four Gospels in 1853. Consider, is such a man likely to have his hand on the pulse of the living language?

:-)

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    Anybody who can write a diatesseron is pretty knowledgeable - about something.
    – tunny
    Commented Nov 13, 2014 at 21:15
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1 ... with her dying breath the witch imprecated the villagers for their relentless persecution of her. Transitive use, meaning to wish evil upon someone, to curse someone.

2 to imprecate something upon someone. Transitive use.

A rare verb. It seems still in use in AmE, whereas it is considered archaic in BrE. Longman Dic. Of Contemporary English has not registered this verb.

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