inform
Formsinforms, informing, informed
Formsinforms, informing, informed
- 1To communicate knowledge to someone; to tell a person facts about something.
The agency informs travelers of any changes to their flights.
She wanted to inform the committee before the meeting began.
Similartell, notify, advise, brief, update
Note
The person told stands as the object, and the news follows with of. Shakespeare's "I am informed thoroughly of the cause" shows the passive construction, and Spenser's spy, who will "inform his master hastily," shows the active one. Remove the person receiving the news and the verb becomes the intransitive use, where informing is simply what a text or a speaker does.
- 2
- 3To give form or character to something; to shape or influence it with a pervading idea or quality.
A deep respect for nature informs all of her paintings.
These principles should inform our final decision.
Similarshape, pervade, influence, guide, permeate
Note
The Latin fōrma behind the old teaching sense is still visible here: to inform something is to put form or spirit into it. Dryden's translation of Virgil (1697) has sculptors "inform the breathing brass." Prior makes breath the animating force of "this fleeting frame." Modern use is abstract and stops short of causing. Gary Younge wrote in 2013 that WikiLeaks "did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them."
- 4To act as an informer; to give authorities information that denounces another person.
She refused to inform on her colleagues despite the pressure.
A neighbor informed against the family during the occupation.
Similartell
Note
The preposition does the work here. To inform on or against someone is to report them. To inform someone, with no preposition, is only the plain "tell" sense. The noun informer belongs to this meaning and carries its weight of denunciation. A neighbor who informs against a family is not passing along news. The neighbor is handing that family over to the authorities.
- 5
- 6Without regular form; shapeless, and so misshapen or ugly.
The ancient idol was an inform mass of weathered stone.
Critics called the building inform, a heap without proportion.
Similarshapeless, formless, misshapen, amorphous
Oppositeshapely
Note
A separate word that happens to share the verb's spelling. It comes from Latin īnfōrmis, "shapeless," where the prefix denies form rather than putting it in. Charles Cotton's "Wonders of Peake" (1765) pairs it with rude for a landscape of "bleak crags, and naked hills." Read it as an adjective of rough, unshaped matter, never as a participle of the verb.
Less common meanings
- 7To instruct or train someone, usually in matters of knowledge.
She engaged a scholar to inform her sons in philosophy.
The academy informed its students in rhetoric and logic.
Note
The teaching sense keeps the verb's Latin root in view: īnfōrmō meant both "to shape, form" and "to train, instruct, educate," from in- "into" plus fōrma "form." To inform a pupil was to put form into a mind. The use is archaic now, and teach and educate have taken over its work. Expect it in older texts, where instruction is pictured as shaping.
- 8To take shape and become visible or otherwise apparent.
As dawn broke, the distant hills slowly informed against the sky.
It is the bloody business which informs / Thus to mine eyes.
c. 1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”Note
Here the shaping happens with no one doing it: a form simply arises before the eyes. Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1606) has the line "It is the bloody business which informs / Thus to mine eyes." The verb takes no object, which separates it from the transitive "give form" sense, and it keeps Latin īnfōrmō, "to shape", close to the surface. It is archaic; use it only where deliberately old-fashioned diction is wanted.
- 9To make things known in a wise and knowledgeable manner.
Note
An obsolete intransitive use with no listener named. The weight falls on the manner of telling, wisely or knowledgeably, rather than on who is told. Modern English would say enlighten or instruct instead. It differs from the living intransitive in that quality of judgment. Plain imparting of information survives in current use, but the learned kind no longer does.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
From Middle English "informen," borrowed from Old French "enformer, informer" (to train, instruct, inform), from Latin "īnfōrmō" (to shape, form, train, instruct, educate), formed from "in-" (into) plus "fōrma" (form, shape).
From Latin "īnfōrmis."