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.

Verb

(en verb)

To examine critically or carefully; especially, to search out problems or determine condition; to scrutinize.

To view and examine officially.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=6 citation , passage=‘[…] I remember a lady coming to inspect St. Mary's Home where I was brought up and seeing us all in our lovely Elizabethan uniforms we were so proud of, and bursting into tears all over us because “it was wicked to dress us like charity children”. […]’.}}