Imply Meaning
/ɪmˈplaɪ/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
verbTo have as a necessary consequence; to lead to (something) as a consequence.
verbTo suggest by logical inference.
Sentence Examples
Are you trying to imply that I'm lying?
His silence seemed to imply agreement.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The teacher's tone seemed to ____ that the students were not working hard enough.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
His sudden silence seemed to ____ that he did not agree with the plan we had proposed.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English implien, emplien, borrowed from Old French emplier, from Latin implicare (“to infold, involve”), from in (“in”) + plicare (“to fold”). Doublet of employ and implicate.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Our upper bound is the best possible, and it implies the existence of low-rank factorizations of positive semidefinite bivariate matrix polynomials and representations of biforms as sums of few squares."
— 2016, Grigoriy Blekherman, Daniel Plaumann, Rainer Sinn, Cynthia Vinzant, “Low-Rank Sum-of-Squares Representations on Varieties of Minimal Degree”, in arXiv:
"The wrongminded notion of the feminist movement which implied it was anti-male carried with it the wrongminded assumption that all female space would necessarily be an environment where patriarchy and sexist thinking would be absent."
— 2013, Margaret Helen Hobbs, Carla Rice, Gender and Women's Studies in Canada: Critical Terrain, →ISBN, page 13:
"Naturally, the river wasn't wrinkled or creased at all— wrong words, implying something unfluid like skin, something unenduring, prey to age."
— 2019, Margaret Laurence, The Diviners:
"Both French and English had once used parcel to refer to pieces of land that made up an estate, but when it evolved to imply an item of business in both, it retained its connotations of small fragmentariness in French, whereas in English it simply meant a package."
— 2022, R. F. Kuang, Babel, HarperVoyager, page 470:
"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, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The teacher's tone seemed to ____ that the students were not working hard enough.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
His sudden silence seemed to ____ that he did not agree with the plan we had proposed.