What is the difference between insinuate and imply?
insinuate | imply | Synonyms |
(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.
(of a proposition) to have as a necessary consequence
(of a person) to suggest by logical inference
(of a person or proposition) to hint; to insinuate; to suggest tacitly and avoid a direct statement
(archaic) to enfold, entangle.
* 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , I.iv:
Imply is a synonym of insinuate.
As verbs the difference between insinuate and imply
is that insinuate is to creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices while imply is to have as a necessary consequence.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.
Synonyms
* (Make a way for or introduce something by subtle, crafty or artful means. ): implyExternal links
* *Anagrams
* ----imply
English
Verb
(en-verb)- The proposition that "all dogs are mammals" implies that my dog is a mammal
- When I state that your dog is brown, I am not implying that all dogs are brown
- What do you mean "we need to be more careful with hygiene"? Are you implying that I don't wash my hands?
- And in his bosome secretly there lay / An hatefull Snake, the which his taile vptyes / In many folds, and mortall sting implyes .