Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To involve by logical necessity; entail: Life implies growth and death.
- v. To express or indicate indirectly: His tone implied disapproval. See Synonyms at suggest. See Usage Note at infer.
- v. Obsolete To entangle.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To infold; inclose; inwrap.
- To contain by implication; include virtually; involve; signify or import by fair inference or deduction; hence, to express indirectly; insinuate.
Wiktionary
- v. archaic to enfold, entangle.
- v. transitive to have as a necessary consequence
- v. transitive, of a person to suggest by logical inference
- v. transitive to hint; to insinuate; to suggest tacitly and avoid a direct statement
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. obsolete To infold or involve; to wrap up.
- v. To involve in substance or essence, or by fair inference, or by construction of law, when not include virtually.
- v. obsolete To refer, ascribe, or attribute.
WordNet 3.0
- v. suggest that someone is guilty
- v. have as a necessary feature
- v. express or state indirectly
- v. suggest as a logically necessary consequence; in logic
- v. have as a logical consequence
Etymologies
- From Old French emplier, from Latin implicare ("to infold, involve"), from in ("in") + plicare ("to fold") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English implien, from Old French emplier, to enfold, from Latin implicāre; see implicate. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Why does the word imply male siblings and not female as well?”
““Why does the word imply male siblings and not female as well?””
“By the way - the numvber two rule is that ever4y poster will post the exact opposite of what their name imply e.g.”
“Does the "Chapter 1" part of the title imply that there will be a Chapter 2?”
“As the two parts of the title imply, it contrasts the recent Axelrodian hagiography of Obama as the biracial transcender with the man's own evasively written but ultimately quite clear autobiography.”
“Nobody who thinks that Obama should be removed from office because of birth certificate issues and what they might imply is making an argument that I would take seriously.”
“Atonement, she seems to imply, is about self-flagellation, sacrifice, and pain; how dare someone use his lemons to make lemonade!”
The Huffington Post: Simon Maxwell Apter: Why Reality TV Is the Best Place to Reinvent Your Image
“Now if at least you were to refer to the bills that Bill Clinton actually signed that helped put us all in this current mess, I'd kinda get along with you but what you imply is utterly ridiculous.”
“However what your attempting to imply is that because FDR did such a thing people here were somehow for/responsible [for] such an action”
“Higher proportions of voluntary terminations imply that current/recent employees are choosing to leave the organisation, so could imply job insecurity and hence dissatisfaction; higher proportions of involuntary terminations imply that the organisation is downsizing, so could again imply job insecurity and hence dissatisfaction.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘imply’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Psychology
Chapter 1
rigorous, occurrence, maze, divers, intellectual, expansion, all in all, sensation, introspection, radical, orientation, nurture and 174 more...
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EN - confusables
Similar words meaning different things
torturous, wreathe, tortuous, wreath, titivate, titillate, stationary, storey, septic, principal, principle, story and 134 more...
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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On with their heads!
Words that make other words with the addition of one letter at the beginning. The resulting words are tagged "behead".
men, his, yes, any, iota, limb, aged, laid, land, lead, read, word and 327 more...
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September/October 2011
excogitate, extrapolate, infer, imply, theorize, hypothesize, propose, propound, explicate, elucidate, prognostication, construe and 3 more...
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Words that look like adverbs but aren't
manly, womanly, ungainly, slovenly, homily, costly, dastardly, family, sparkly, wrinkly, oily, orderly and 69 more...
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Pedantic distinctions
Put the two words next to each other. Pedants of the world pen your pet peeves here!
syntax, grammar, imply, infer, comprise, compose, effect, affect, insure, ensure, uninterested, disinterested and 21 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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to memorize
words i need to memorize
aberrant, abscond, advocate, aggrandize, amalgamate, ambiguous, ambrosial, anomalous, antediluvian, antipathy, arbitrate, assuage and 163 more...
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ecbrenner's list
flatline, luddism, apocalipstick, muttsucker, leviathan of fore..., flint, coryphaeus, donnybrook, bandwidth, bagpipe the mizen, cheesed off, asterism and 525 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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Vocabulary Words
words to reference while writing something
cohesive, epitome, tempered, imply, prudent, sundry, sagest, agitation, giddy, disposition, inclination, gracious and 114 more...
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colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
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fifi
verbs Adj Adv noun
indulge, convene, solve, dissolve, prospect, prospective, allege, resolve, accountable, administration, amid, agenda and 407 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
Tweets
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