Ingratiate vs Insinuate - What's the difference?
ingratiate | insinuate |
(reflexive) To bring oneself into favour with someone by flattering or trying to please him or her.
* 1849 , , Shirley , ch. 15:
* 1903 , , The Way of All Flesh , ch. 58:
* 2007 July 9, , "
To recommend; to render easy or agreeable.
* , "Sermon XIII" in Miscellaneous Theological Works of Henry Hammond, Volume 3 (1850 edition),
(rare) To creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.
* Woodward
(figurative, by extension) To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.
* 1995 , , p. 242
* John Locke
* Dryden
* Clarendon
To hint; to suggest tacitly while avoiding a direct statement.
As verbs the difference between ingratiate and insinuate
is that ingratiate is (reflexive) to bring oneself into favour with someone by flattering or trying to please him or her while insinuate is (rare) to creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.ingratiate
English
Verb
- [H]e considered this offering an homage to his merits, and an attempt on the part of the heiress to ingratiate herself into his priceless affections.
- [H]e would pat the children on the head when he saw them on the stairs, and ingratiate himself with them as far as he dared.
Why Maliki Is Still Around," Time (retrieved 26 May 2014):
- He ingratiated himself with the Kurdish bloc when he stood up to aggressive Turkish rhetoric about the Kurdish border in May.
p. 283 (Google preview):
- What difficulty would it [the love of Christ] not ingratiate to us?
insinuate
English
Verb
- The water easily insinuates itself into, and placidly distends, the vessels of vegetables.
- 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.
- 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.
- Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.
- He insinuated himself into the very good grace of the Duke of Buckingham.
- She insinuated that her friends had betrayed her.
