Signify vs Insinuate - What's the difference?
signify | insinuate | Related terms |
To give (something) a meaning or an importance.
To show one’s intentions with a sign etc.
* (rfdate) (William Shakespeare)
* (rfdate) (Jonathan Swift)
To mean; to betoken.
* (rfdate) (William Shakespeare)
(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.
Signify is a related term of insinuate.
As verbs the difference between signify and insinuate
is that signify is to give (something) a meaning or an importance while insinuate is (rare) to creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.signify
English
Verb
(en-verb)- I'll to the king; and signify to him / That thus I have resign'd my charge to you.
- The government should signify to the Protestants of Ireland that want of silver is not to be remedied.
- A tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.
Synonyms
* (l) * (l)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.