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Assimilate vs Assign - What's the difference?

assimilate | assign |

As verbs the difference between assimilate and assign

is that assimilate is to incorporate nutrients into the body, especially after digestion while assign is to designate or set apart something for some purpose.

As a noun assign is

an assignee.

assimilate

English

Verb

(assimilat)
  • To incorporate nutrients into the body, especially after digestion.
  • Food is assimilated and converted into organic tissue.
  • * Isaac Newton
  • Hence also animals and vegetables may assimilate their nourishment.
  • To incorporate or absorb knowledge into the mind.
  • The teacher paused in her lecture to allow the students to assimilate what she had said.
  • * Merivale
  • His mind had no power to assimilate the lessons.
  • To absorb a group of people into a community.
  • The aliens in the science-fiction film wanted to assimilate human beings into their own race.
  • To compare a thing to something similar.
  • To bring to a likeness or to conformity; to cause a resemblance between.
  • * John Bright
  • to assimilate our law to the law of Scotland
  • * Cowper
  • Fast falls a fleecy shower; the downy flakes / Assimilate all objects.

    Synonyms

    *(To incorporate or absorb knowledge into the mind) process *(absorb a group of people into a community) integrate

    assign

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (lb) To designate or set apart something for some purpose.
  • :
  • (lb) To appoint or select someone for some office.
  • :
  • (lb) To allot or give something as a task.
  • *(Robert Southey) (1774-1843)
  • *:The man who could feel thus was worthy of a better station than that in which his lot had been assigned .
  • * (1796-1859)
  • *:He assigned to his men their several posts.
  • *
  • *:Captain Edward Carlisle; he could not tell what this prisoner might do. He cursed the fate which had assigned such a duty, cursed especially that fate which forced a gallant soldier to meet so superb a woman as this under handicap so hard.
  • (lb) To attribute or sort something into categories.
  • To transfer property, a legal right, etc., from one person to another.
  • To give (a value) to a variable.
  • :
  • Derived terms

    * assignment * assignable * assignation

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An assignee.
  • (obsolete) A thing relating or belonging to something else; an appurtenance.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Six French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns , as girdles, hangers, and so.
    English transitive verbs