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.

Verb

(emulat)

To attempt to equal or be the same as.

To copy or imitate, especially a person.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=October 1 , author=Saj Chowdhury , title=Wolverhampton 1 - 2 Newcastle , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=The Magpies are unbeaten and enjoying their best run since 1994, although few would have thought the class of 2011 would come close to emulating their ancestors.}}

(obsolete) To feel a rivalry with; to be jealous of, to envy.

* 1624 , John Smith, Generall Historie , in Kupperman 1988, p. 146:

But the councell then present emulating my successe, would not thinke it fit to spare me fortie men to be hazzarded in those unknowne regions [...].

(computing) of a program or device: to imitate another program or device