Verb

To establish the identity of someone or something.

*

(biology) To establish the taxonomic classification of an organism.

*

To equate or make the same; to unite or combine into one.

* D. Ramsay

Every precaution is taken to identify the interests of the people and of the rulers.

* Burke

Let us identify , let us incorporate ourselves with the people.

(reflexive) To have a strong affinity (with); to feel oneself to be modelled on or connected to.

* 1999 , Joyce Crick, translating Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams , Oxford 2008, p. 117:

The dream is given a new interpretation if in her dream she means not herself but her friend, if she has put herself in the place of her friend, or, as we may say, she has identified herself with her.

To associate oneself with some group.

*

To claim an identity; to describe oneself as a member of a group; to assert the use of a particular term to describe oneself.

* {{quote-magazine

, year=2010 , author= , title=Youth Who Self-Identify as Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual at Higher Suicide Risk, Say Researchers , date=Feb. 6, 2010 , magazine=Science Daily citation , passage="The main message is that it's the interface between individuals and society that causes students who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual the most distress," said study first author Yue Zhao. }}

Verb

(rare) To creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.

* Woodward

The water easily insinuates itself into, and placidly distends, the vessels of vegetables.

(figurative, by extension) To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.

* 1995 , , p. 242

Nanny didn't so much enter places as insinuate herself; she had unconsciously taken a natural talent for liking people and developed it into an occult science.

* John Locke

All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.

* Dryden

Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.

* Clarendon

He insinuated himself into the very good grace of the Duke of Buckingham.

To hint; to suggest tacitly while avoiding a direct statement.

She insinuated that her friends had betrayed her.