influence
Verbinfluences, influencing, influenced
Noun pluralinfluences
Formsinfluences, influencing, influenced
Pluralinfluences
- 1To have an effect on someone or something, especially on how they think, behave, or develop, often without direct force.
Her mentor influenced her decision to study medicine.
Marketing campaigns influence consumer behavior in subtle ways.
UsageTakes a direct object: influence someone (not
incorrect: influence onsomeone). The noun is the one that takes on. - 2The power to affect how someone thinks or behaves or how something develops, or the effect this power has.
The senator used her influence to push the bill through committee.
Growing up by the sea had a lasting influence on his painting.
UsageHave an influence on something is an effect; influence over someone suggests a hold on them.
- 3A person or thing that exerts power to affect or change someone or something.
The coach remained a steadying influence throughout the season.
Critics called the philosopher a major influence on modern thought.
UsageUsually with a and an adjective: a calming influence, a bad influence on teenagers.
Similarinspiration, force
Note
George Orwell pushes it toward something almost physical, with Snowball as an invisible influence pervading the air. That image comes close in spirit to the old "flowing in" sense.
Less common meanings
- 4A force, believed in astrology, that shapes a person's character and tendencies according to the position of the stars and planets at their birth.
According to her horoscope, the influence of Saturn made her cautious and reserved.
Ancient astrologers traced each person's temperament to the influence of the planets at birth.
UsageUsually the influence of a named planet or the stars: the influence of Saturn.
Note
The meaning the word carried into English. In Old French, influence was an emanation from the stars that shaped one's fate. Behind it is Latin īnfluēns, "flowing in": the heavens were pictured pouring something into a person at birth. Influenza is a doublet, the same Latin word reaching English by another route.
- 5A flowing in of something, such as air or fluid, into a place or body.
God hath his influence into the very essence of all things.
1594, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical PolitieNote
A sense that takes the Latin picture of flowing in literally, and its grammar shows it. Richard Hooker, writing in the 1590s, says God "hath his influence into the very essence of all things." Into marks motion, as it would after influx. Read it as movement, not persuasion, and keep it to historical or deliberately archaic writing.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The Latin ancestry of influence contains the meaning flowing in. en.wiktionary.org
- Richard Hooker wrote the quoted words. en.wiktionary.org
- The Hooker passage dates from the 1590s: it appears in Book V of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, first published in 1597. en.wikipedia.org
- The historical sense illustrated by the quotation is flowing in or influx. en.wiktionary.org
- 6To cause something to flow into another; to infuse or instill it.
Note
The verb partner of the obsolete "influx" noun. Something is made to flow into something else, literally or figuratively, the way one infuses a liquid or instills a quality. The modern verb keeps the direct object but has lost the flowing. When this sense turns up in older texts, paraphrase it as infuse rather than sway.
- 7Electrostatic induction: the redistribution of electric charge in a material caused by the nearness of another charged object, without direct contact.
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Practice
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Origin
At its root is Latin īnfluō ("to flow into"), made of in- ("in") and fluō ("flow"); its present participle īnfluēns led to Medieval Latin īnfluentia, which reached English by way of Old French and Middle English influence (at first "an emanation from the stars affecting one's fate"). It is a doublet of influenza.