Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To deal or mete out (something punishing or burdensome); impose: inflicted heavy losses on the enemy; a storm that inflicted widespread damage.
- v. To afflict.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To lay on or impose as something that must be borne or suffered; cause to be suffered: as, to inflict punishment on offenders; to inflict a penalty on transgressors.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To give, cause, or produce by striking, or as if by striking; to apply forcibly; to lay or impose; to send; to cause to bear, feel, or suffer
WordNet 3.0
- v. impose something unpleasant
Etymologies
- Latin īnflīgere, īnflīct- : in-, on; see in-2 + flīgere, to strike. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“People need to realize that there are some critics out there who are willing in inflict real-world harm on anyone suspected of being part of ˜The Wedge. ”
“There was always the risk that displaying these pictures might again inflict pain and fear on some viewers.”
"Return to Sender" Confronting Lynching and Our Haunted Landscapes
“The justification that journalists can offer for the harm they inevitably inflict is to show, through their actions, their understanding that what they do matters and that it should be done with care.”
“The offense they inflict is a function of how the speaker intends them and how the listener interprets them, with intent and interpretation trapped in subtle feedback loop: Speaker intent is partly determined by the speaker’s belief about how the listener will react, interpretation turns on deciphering what was intended, and so on.”
“But at Camp X-Ray, especially before ICRC (or International Committee of the Red Cross) arrived, I heard many times the IRF team being told (and telling each other before they went to get a detainee) that it was their time to "get some," which is to say inflict pain, get revenge.”
“Now, they've got to get us to respond in such fashion that the damage that they can inflict, which is necessarily confined to a specific locale, is spread across the whole country.”
“Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master); nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression inflict injury on the tradition.”
ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus
“As it is, I tell you to prepare for the heaviest punishment it can inflict, which is, that you be compelled to read some one of the”
The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain The Works of William Carleton, Volume One
“Wherefore, according to the judgment of the present life the death punishment is inflicted, not for every mortal sin, but only for such as inflict an irreparable harm, or again for such as contain some horrible deformity.”
“Perhaps it was that I did not want to "inflict" sadness on my Facebook friends, or maybe I am simply not used to sharing something so personal in a very public way like that.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘inflict’.
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hunting
crudely, unequivocal, obsolete, obscure, overtly, misdeed, shack, inherent, outcry, hefty, composed, poised and 318 more...
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
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LIT - Odyssey - key words and phrases
Key words of the Odyssey by Homer in English including all those famous repeating epitethons like
"bright-eyed Athene"
"wine-dark sea"
"rosy-fingered dawn"
"long suf...Odysseus, sea, Athene, goddess, land, Achaean, wind, wave, Ithaca, lead, Poseidon, mortal and 732 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, I
irenic, inimical, ignotism, infrangible, internecine, illumine, ingot, imposter, iconoclast, indefeasible, indefatigable, impingement and 184 more...
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Verba Dilecta
delectable, notate, pauciloquy, paucity, pauciloquent, paucify, interscapilium, uropygium, inferna, nota, equipollent, prepollent and 677 more...
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Revised GRE Wordlist_2013
Vocabulary building for my quest of GRE 2013
ephemeral, esoteric, rhetoric, censure, egregious, pittance, dupe, mulct, paucity, alacrity, maintain, laconic and 997 more...
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TheLastGoodNameLeft
The Last Good Words Left
ephemera, gammon, errata, ellipses, octopi, heteronormative, polyp, intersectionality, theses, california, halfback, fullback and 555 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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_mark's list
Words I like!
( personal list, favorite words, randomness )psy, nanobot, success, smack, vibration, microcosmic, springgraph, marksmanship, estranged, homoerotic, flex, fiasco and 1696 more...
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Classical (Greco-Roman)
Via the classical world.
abhor, entrails, spawn, forge, gorge, profound, assail, sarcophagus, pyre, adamant, attest, salient and 80 more...
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introduction to death
words that cause death,or defines death.
detonate, explosive, ammunition, rocket, shrapnel, grenade, nitroglycerin, propellant, fireworks, fuel, combustible, electricity and 62 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for inflict.
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