insinuate

English

WOTD – 30 November 2007

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^(key): /ɪnˈsɪnjueɪt/
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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; reprinted Menston, Yorkshire: The Scolar Press, 1970, →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], chapter V, in Shirley. A Tale. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., , →OCLC:
  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 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, “”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. Together with the Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus. , London: Printed for 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.