DictionaryAI

imply

verb
im-PLY/ɪmˈplaɪ/

Formsimplies, implying, implied

Often confused with infer

4 meanings of imply

Practice

  1. 1
    verbtransitive
    To hint at or suggest something indirectly, without stating it openly.

    The manager's careful wording seemed to imply that layoffs were coming.

    By praising everyone else, she implied that he alone had failed.

    Similarsuggest, hint, insinuate, intimate, signal

    Oppositestate

    Note

    Of the modern senses, this one carries an edge. "Are you implying that I don't wash my hands?" is less a question than a challenge. Words can imply as well as people: in The Diviners, Margaret Laurence rejects "wrinkled" for a river because it suggests skin and age. In Babel, R. F. Kuang traces how parcel came to imply an item of business.

  2. 2
    verbtransitive
    To suggest something as a logical conclusion drawn from the available facts.

    The data imply a strong link between diet and health.

    Rising prices implied that demand had outpaced supply.

    Similarindicate, suggest, signal, show

    Note

    Here a speaker or a body of evidence does the suggesting, and a classic trap sits beside it: the speaker implies, the listener infers. "I am not implying that all dogs are brown" disclaims a conclusion someone might draw. Saying "you're inferring" would point at the hearer instead. Careful writers keep the two verbs at opposite ends of the same exchange.

  3. 3
    verbtransitive
    To have something as a necessary consequence, so that one thing inevitably leads to the other.

    Doubling the recipe implies using twice as much flour.

    These assumptions imply a contradiction we cannot ignore.

    Similarentail, involve, mean, require, necessitate

    Note

    Logic and mathematics use the word in its strictest form, usually with a statement rather than a person as subject: "all dogs are mammals" implies that my dog is one. The slogan "correlation does not imply causation" depends on this force. A link that might hold is not one that must. For the looser, everyday kind of suggestion, see the "hint" meaning.

Less common meaning

  1. 4
    verbarchaic
    To enfold or entangle something, wrapping it up within folds, coils, or growth.
    And in his bosome secretly there lay / An hatefull Snake, the which his taile vptyes / In many folds, and mortall sting implyes.
    1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
    Note

    Edmund Spenser still uses it in The Faerie Queene (1590), where a snake coils its tail "in many folds, and mortall sting implyes". The tail wraps the sting inside its coils. This is the word's oldest picture, from Latin implicare, "to fold in", which also gave English employ and implicate. In older verse, read it as "enfolds". Modern readers would take it in the logical sense.

Practice

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Origin

'Imply' comes from Middle English 'implien', borrowed from Old French 'emplier', from Latin 'implicare' ('to infold, involve'), formed from 'in' ('in') plus 'plicare' ('to fold'). It is a doublet of 'employ' and 'implicate'.