Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.
  • transitive verb To make up; fabricate.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To come upon; light upon; meet with; find.
  • To find out by original study or contrivance; create by a new use or combination of means; devise the form, construction, composition, method, or principle of.
  • In general, to produce by contrivance; fabricate; concoet; devise: as, to invent the plot of a story; to invent an excuse or a falsehood.
  • Synonyms 2 and 3. Discover, Invent. See discover and invention.

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

  • transitive verb obsolete To come or light upon; to meet; to find.
  • transitive verb To discover, as by study or inquiry; to find out; to devise; to contrive or produce for the first time; -- applied commonly to the discovery of some serviceable mode, instrument, or machine.
  • transitive verb To frame by the imagination; to fabricate mentally; to forge; -- in a good or a bad sense

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

  • verb To design a new process or mechanism.
  • verb To create something fictional for a particular purpose.
  • verb obsolete To come upon; to find; to find out; to discover.

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

  • verb come up with (an idea, plan, explanation, theory, or principle) after a mental effort
  • verb make up something artificial or untrue

Etymologies

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

[Latin invenīre, invent-, to find : in-, on, upon; see in– + venīre, to come; see gwā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English inventen, from Old French inventer, from Latin inventus, perfect passive participle of inveniō ("come upon, meet with, find, discover"), from in ("in, on") + veniō ("come"); see venture. Compare advent, covent, event, prevent, etc.

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Examples

Comments

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  • you create your own story

    May 14, 2009

  • I know. It's just that I feel like an extra in it :-(

    May 14, 2009