implement

Formsimplements, implementing, implemented

Pluralimplements

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To put a plan, decision, or policy into practice and carry it out.

   The company plans to implement the new policy across all departments.

   It took months to implement the reforms the committee had recommended.

   Similarexecute

   Note

   Behind the verb is Late Latin implēmentum, "a filling up," from impleō, "I fill up": to implement something is, at root, to fill a plan out until it becomes real. Its objects are plans and their relatives, such as proposals, a gameplan or a policy. It is comfortable in the passive (if the closure proposals are implemented). Execute is its near-synonym, and disrealize is its opposite.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A tool or instrument used to perform a particular task.

   Farmers store their implements in the large barn behind the house.

   The chef reached for a special implement to score the pastry.

   Similartool, instrument, utensil, device, gadget

   Note

   Usually plural and usually named by the work it serves: farming implements, agricultural implements, gardening implements. Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams uses it the same way, in a dream where barrel-maker's implements lie around. The noun shares its Latin source of "filling up" with the verb "carry out", though here the word names the equipment rather than the act.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To realize a technical specification, such as an algorithm, interface, or protocol, in working form.

   The developers implemented the encryption protocol exactly as the standard described.

   You can implement this interface in any language that supports the framework.

   Similarexecute

   Note

   Programmers and engineers use it with a specification as the object: you implement an algorithm, an interface or a protocol. The result is something that works, in code or hardware that behaves the way the specification says it should. It narrows the general "carry out" sense. A policy is implemented when it is put into effect, and a protocol is implemented when someone builds a working version of it.

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