involve
Formsinvolves, involving, involved
- 1To contain something as one of its parts or as an element connected to it.
The renovation will involve replacing the roof and updating the wiring.
Her research involves extensive fieldwork in remote regions.
Oppositeexclude
Note
Behind the everyday sense lies an image of wrapping. Middle English involven meant to envelop or surround, borrowed from Old French or straight from Latin involvere. Bacon in 1605 writes of religious mysteries "involved in Fables," and Berkeley in 1710 of mysteries involved in numbers: contained, but also hidden inside. The hiding has since dropped away. A job now simply involves its tasks, often named with an -ing form: it involves forecasting.
- 2To carry with it something that follows logically, naturally, or necessarily as a part or result.
Free speech necessarily involves the risk of giving offense.
Any cut in spending will involve hard choices about which programs survive.
Note
Here the thing included is a consequence rather than a component. It follows of necessity, the way risk follows from free speech. Substitution is a handy test. If entail or imply fits the sentence, this is the sense; if comprise or contain fits better, it is the plain "include" meaning. Thomas Browne and Thomas Hobbes already use it this way in the 1640s and 1650s, in arguments where one thing carries another within it.
- 3
- 4To engage someone or oneself in an emotional or sexual relationship, typically with the preposition with.
She vowed never again to involve herself with someone from work.
Against his friends' advice, he involved himself with his business partner's sister.
Note
The passive carries most of the weight here: people are far more often involved with someone, or get involved with them, than they actively involve anyone. The reflexive involve oneself with also occurs, but it is the less common pattern. Keep the preposition with. Involved in leans back toward the wider sense of taking part, so involved in a scandal and involved with a colleague say quite different things.
They had been involved with each other for years before anyone at the office found out.
She didn't want to involve herself with a married man.
- 5To entangle, intertwine, or mingle things together; especially, to entangle someone or something in a confusing or troublesome situation.
The merger involved the company in a web of regulatory disputes.
He was careful not to involve his finances with his brother's failing business.
Similarimplicate, entangle, mingle, blend, merge
Oppositeextricate, disentangle, separate
Note
Trouble is the usual destination of this figurative entangling: one involves a person in debt, in misery, in perplexity. Thomas Elyot in 1531 complains that the study of law is "involved in so barbarous a language," tangled up in it rather than taking part. That marks the line between this sense and the "take part" meaning. Here the object is caught, not invited. Implicate once carried the same entangling force.
- 6To enclose something on all sides, completely covering, surrounding, or concealing it.
Darkness involved the valley long before the travelers reached the inn.
My love involves the love before; / My love is vaster passion now; / Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou / I seem to love thee more and more.
1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In MemoriamSimilarenvelop, enwrap, enfold
Note
Here the word still carries its Latin picture, involvere, to roll up or wrap. In Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), a scorched hollow lies "all involv'd / With stench and smoak." The usual frame was involve in darkness or obscurity. Because the sense is now archaic, it reads as deliberate period style. In plain modern prose, envelop or enfold says the same thing without suggesting that someone is merely taking part.
- 7To roll or fold something up, twist it into a coil or spiral, or wind it around something else.
The serpent involved its length around the marble pillar.
[S]ome of Serpent kinde / Wondrous in length and corpulence involv'd / Thir Snakie foulds, and added wings.
1667, John Milton, Paradise LostNote
The most physical of the archaic senses is the one about coiling and winding. Milton's serpents in Paradise Lost "involv'd / Thir Snakie foulds," and Shelley in 1817 still writes of devils who "around me involved a giddy dance." These are poets' uses. In a modern sentence, readers will hear the familiar verb unless the coil is explicit, so wind or entwine is the safer choice.
- 8To make something intricate or tangled in form or meaning; to complicate it.
Each new amendment involved the statute further, until even judges despaired of reading it.
The distribution and configuration of the land, together with the influence of the winds, greatly involve the problem of the tides, and render it one of the most difficult in the whole range of physics.
1848, Thomas Milner, “Tides and Oceanic Highways”Note
In this obsolete sense, the thing involved is made harder, not included, so watch the object. Thomas More pairs it with intryke: "to inuolue and intryke the matter." Thomas Milner in 1848 writes that winds and coastlines "greatly involve the problem of the tides." A modern reader easily hears the "include" meaning there. The adverb greatly is the giveaway, and reading involve as complicate makes the sentence clear.
- 9In mathematics, to raise a number to a given power by multiplying it by itself the required number of times.
Early arithmetic textbooks asked pupils to involve given roots to the fifth or sixth power.
The algebraist involved the binomial to the seventh power by repeated multiplication.
Note
An old term of arithmetic and algebra, built on a fixed frame: a quantity is involved to the third or fourth power. Jeremiah Day's An Introduction to Algebra (1814) uses it in a chapter titled "Evolution of Compound Quantities," dividing by the root "involved to the next inferiour power." Modern mathematics says raise to a power, and that is the phrasing to use outside historical writing.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of involve apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From Late Middle English involven, borrowed from Old French involver or directly from Latin involvere ('to roll upon, wrap up, envelop, overwhelm'). The Latin verb combines the prefix in- ('in, within') with volvo ('to roll, tumble'), which ultimately goes back to Proto-Indo-European *welH- ('to turn, to wind').