# insinuate
## English
### Etymology

From Latin īnsinuō (“to push in, creep in, steal in”), from in (“in”) + sinus (“a winding, bend, bay, fold, bosom”).

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA: /ɪnˈsɪnjueɪt/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Audio (General Australian):(file)

### Verb

insinuate (third-person singular simple present insinuates, present participle insinuating, simple past and past participle insinuated)
* To hint; to suggest tacitly (usually something bad) while avoiding a direct statement.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:allude
    She insinuated that her friends had betrayed her.
** 1610 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist, London: […] Thomas Snodham, for Walter Burre, and are to be sold by Iohn Stepneth, […], published 1612, →OCLC, Act II, scene iii:And wilt thou inſinuate what I am? and praiſe me? And ſay I am a Noble Fellow?
** 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 82:And, moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses.
** 1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 4, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC:‘You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing conscious of a vacancy.’
* (rare) To creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.
** 1728-1729, John Woodward, An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England
    Water will insinuate itself into Flints through certain imperceptible Cracks
* (figurative, by extension) To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.
** 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 3, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC: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.
** 1693, John Dryden, “[The Dedication]”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […] Together with the Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson […], →OCLC:Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.
** 1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, “(please specify |book=I to XVI)”, in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the Theater, published 1707, →OCLC:He […] insinuated himself into the very good grace of the Duke of Buckingham.
** 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 306:[…] he insinuated himself into the confidence of one already so forlorn—[…]
** 1995, Terry Pratchett, Maskerade, page 242: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.

#### Related terms

* insinuation
* insinuator
* sinuous

#### Translations
### Further reading

* “insinuate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* “insinuate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

### Anagrams

* annuities

## Italian
### Etymology 1
#### Verb

insinuate
* inflection of insinuare:
** second-person plural present indicative
** second-person plural imperative

### Etymology 2
#### Participle

insinuate f pl
* feminine plural of insinuato

## Latin
### Verb

īnsinuāte
* second-person plural present active imperative of īnsinuō

## Spanish
### Verb

insinuate
* second-person singular voseo imperative of insinuar combined with te