insinuate
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪnˈsɪnjueɪt/
Forms: form: insinuates
form: insinuating
form: insinuated
form: insinuated
Etymology: First attested in 1529; Borrowed from Latin īnsinuātus, perfect passive participle of īnsinuō (“to push in, creep in, steal in”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from in- (“in”) + sinus (“a winding, bend, bay, fold, bosom”) -ō (verb-forming suffix). Regular participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.
Senses: examples: text: She insinuated that her friends had betrayed her.
text: And wilt thou inſinuate what I am? and praiſe me? And ſay I am a Noble Fellow?
ref: 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:
text: And, moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses.
ref: 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Hollow’s Cottage”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 82:
text: ‘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.’
ref: 1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 4, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC:
synonyms: word: advert
word: allude
word: hint
word: imply
word: indicate
word: inkle
word: insinuate
word: intimate
word: refer
word: signify
word: suggest
glosses: To hint; to suggest tacitly (usually something bad) while avoiding a direct statement.
examples: 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
glosses: To creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 3, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC:
text: Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.
ref: 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:
text: He[…] insinuated himself into the very good grace of the Duke of Buckingham.
ref: (Can we date this quote?), 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: The Theater:
text: […] he insinuated himself into the confidence of one already so forlorn—[…]
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 1995, Terry Pratchett, Maskerade, page 242:
glosses: To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.
Derived terms: insinuatingly
insinuatingness
insinuative
insinuatory
uninsinuated
Related terms: insinuation
insinuator
sinuous