invest
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪnˈvɛst/
ipa: /ɪnˈvest/
rhymes: -ɛst
Forms: form: invests
form: investing
form: invested
form: invested
Etymology: Borrowed from Middle French investir or Medieval Latin investire, from Latin investio (“to clothe, cover”), from in- (“in, on”) + vestio (“to clothe, dress”), from vestis (“clothing”); see vest. The sense “to spend money etc.” probably via Italian investire, of the same root.
Senses: examples: text: We'd like to thank all the contributors who have invested countless hours into this event.
glosses: To spend money, time, or energy on something, especially for some benefit or purpose; used with in.
examples: text: He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck.
ref: 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick:
glosses: To clothe or wrap (with garments).
examples: text: Cannot find one this girdle to invest!
ref: 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, book 4, canto 5, verse 18:
glosses: To put on (clothing).
examples: text: Night / Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes
ref: 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, ll. 207-8:
glosses: To envelop, wrap, cover.
glosses: To commit money or capital in the hope of financial gain.
glosses: To ceremonially install someone in some office.
examples: text: Madam, whatſoeuer you eſteeme
Of this ſucceſſe, and loſſe vnualued,
Both may inueſt you Empreſſe of the Eaſt: […]
ref: c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii:
text: I do invest you jointly with my power.
ref: c. 1603–06, William Shakespeare, King Lear, act 1, scene 1:
glosses: To formally give (someone) some power or authority.
examples: text: For he saith, if there can be found such an inequality between man and man, as there is between man and beast, or between soul and body, it investeth a right of government: which seemeth rather an impossible case than an untrue sentence.
ref: a. 1626, Francis Bacon, An Advertisement Touching a Holy War:
glosses: To formally give (power or authority).
examples: text: The scene was not without a mixture of awe such as must always invest the spectacle of the guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it.
ref: 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:
text: For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 35, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 171:
glosses: To surround, accompany, or attend.
examples: text: to invest a town
text: When she related that a band of fanatics, after robbing a church of all its silver-plate, and burning the adjacent vicarage, drunk with their success, had invested the Castle, and cried aloud for ‘the man’ to be brought unto them, that he might be hewed to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal—[…]her young hearers felt a deep stirring of the heart,—a proud yet mellowed elation that never yet was felt by the reader of a written history, though its pages were as legitimate as any sanctioned by the royal licenser at Madrid.
ref: 1820, [Charles Robert Maturin], Melmoth the Wanderer: A Tale. […], volume IV, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Company, and Hurst, Robinson, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 216:
glosses: To lay siege to.
glosses: To make investments.
topics: engineering
metallurgy
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: To prepare for lost wax casting by creating an investment mold (a mixture of a silica sand and plaster).
examples: text: From early on in his career, Zola's work as a critic revealed just how heavily he was invested in the literary “dream of stone.”
ref: 2004, Michael D. Garval, A Dream of Stone, University of Delaware Press, →ISBN, page 214:
text: She knew from watching him grow up that he didn't let that many people too close to him, but once he did, he was invested in that relationship.
ref: 2014, Sarah Varland, Tundra Threat: Faith in the Face of Crime, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 107:
text: We decided that it was because he trusted the core beliefs of the Conservative Party, and he was invested in their vision of change in the NorthWest of England where he comes from.
ref: 2015, James Graham, Tory Boyz, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 11:
glosses: To cause to be involved in; to cause to form strong attachments to.
examples: text: The outcome also makes it very difficult for Feijóo to become the next PM, because he does not have the support to be invested as such, unless there are changes in the initial positions of key players such as the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).
ref: 2023 July 24, Carlos Cué, “In Spain, the left's resistance thwarts a PP-Vox majority and leaves all possibilities open”, in El País, retrieved 06 Aug 2023:
topics: government
politics
glosses: To inaugurate the Prime Minister of Spain after a successful parliamentary vote.
Synonyms: sense: put on clothing
word: beclothe
word: don
word: dress
word: clothe
sense: lay siege to
word: besiege
Derived terms: sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: coinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: deinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: disinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investable
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investee
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investible
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investiture
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investive
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investment
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investor
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: investress
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: malinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: misinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: noninvesting
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: outinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: overinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: reinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: rentvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: underinvest
sense: terms derived from invest (verb)
word: uninvest
Related terms: divest
vest
vestibule
vestment
vesture