Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To involve or connect intimately or incriminatingly.
  • transitive verb To have as a consequence or necessary circumstance; imply or entail.
  • transitive verb Linguistics To convey, imply, or suggest by implicature.
  • transitive verb Archaic To interweave or entangle; entwine.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To infold or fold over; involve; entangle.
  • To cause to be affected; show to be concerned or have a part; bring into connection or relation: with by, in, or with: as, the disease implicates other organs; the evidence implicates several persons in the crime.
  • Synonyms Implicate, Involve, Entangle. Implicate and involve are similar words, but with a marked difference. The first means to fold into a thing; the second, to roll into it. What is folded, however, may be folded but once or partially; what is involved is rolled many times. Hence, men are said to be implicated when they are only under suspicion, or have taken but a small share in a transaction; they are said to be involved when they are deeply concerned. In this sense implicate is always used of persons; involve may be used of persons or things; both words being always metaphorically employed. Entangle is used either literally or metaphorically, and signifies to involve so that extrication is a matter of extreme difficulty.
  • noun The thing implied; that which results from implication.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To infold; to fold together; to interweave.
  • transitive verb To bring into connection with; to involve; to connect; -- applied to persons, in an unfavorable sense

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To connect or involve in an unfavorable or criminal way with something.
  • verb To imply, to have as a necessary consequence or accompaniment.
  • verb archaic To fold or twist together, intertwine, interlace, entangle, entwine.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb impose, involve, or imply as a necessary accompaniment or result
  • verb bring into intimate and incriminating connection

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, to convey a truth bound up in a fable, from Latin implicāre, implicāt-, to entangle, unite : in-, in; see in– + plicāre, to fold; see plek- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin implico ("entangle, involve"), from plico ("fold")

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word implicate.

Examples

  • He demands that we learn to regard matter and life as a whole, coherent domain, which he calls the implicate order

    THAT Animeblog 2008

  • He demands that we learn to regard matter and life as a whole, coherent domain, which he calls the implicate order

    Ms. Adventures in Italy 2008

  • He dubbed the implicate order an undivided holistic realm that is beyond concepts like space-time, matter, or energy.

    ENTANGLED MINDS DEAN RADIN 2006

  • He dubbed the implicate order an undivided holistic realm that is beyond concepts like space-time, matter, or energy.

    ENTANGLED MINDS DEAN RADIN 2006

  • He dubbed the implicate order an undivided holistic realm that is beyond concepts like space-time, matter, or energy.

    ENTANGLED MINDS DEAN RADIN 2006

  • 'Credit cards, calls implicate Mossad in Dubai killing'

    WN.com - Articles related to French PM: Mideast peace boosts Syria economy 2010

  • In other words, using this as an excuse to kind of implicate them, to create problems for their ex-husbands.

    CNN Transcript Feb 16, 2009 2009

  • The U.N. investigation into this crime does not even mention Mr. Zuhair, let alone "implicate" him.

    Letters 2009

  • These dangerous sequelæ are liable to follow infection of any scalp wound, but more especially such as implicate the sub-aponeurotic area, or the pericranium.

    Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. Alexander Miles 1893

  • Grice introduced the technical terms implicate and implicature for the case in which what the speaker meant, implied, or suggested is distinct from what the speaker said. [

    Implicature Davis, Wayne 2005

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "...a new notion of order, that may be appropriate to a universe of unbroken wholeness. This is the implicate or enfolded order. In the enfolded order space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of the dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the explicate or unfolded order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders."

    Wholeness and the Implicate Order by Jacob Bohm, p.xv of Introduction

    August 4, 2008

  • "Implicate and involve are similar words, but with a marked difference. The first means to fold into a thing; the second, to roll into it. What is folded, however, may be folded but once or partially; what is involved is rolled many times. Hence, men are said to be implicated when they are only under suspicion, or have taken but a small share in a transaction; they are said to be involved when they are deeply concerned. . . ."

    --Century Dictionary

    April 4, 2011

  • What a beautiful definition.

    April 4, 2011

  • I tried a tortilla involved with salsa and chilli beans. My feeling though is that they are far better implicated with guacamole.

    April 5, 2011