insinuate

From Latin īnsinuō (“to push in, creep in, steal in”), from in (“in”) + sinus (“a winding, bend, bay, fold, bosom”)

• (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈsɪnjueɪt/

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insinuate (third-person singular simple present insinuates, present participle insinuating, simple past and past participle insinuated)

1. To hint; to suggest tacitly (usually something bad) while avoiding a direct statement.

   She insinuated that her friends had betrayed her.

2. (rare) To creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.
   • Woodward

     The water easily insinuates itself into, and placidly distends, the vessels of vegetables.

3. (figuratively, by extension) To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.
   • 1995, Terry Pratchett, Maskerade, p. 242

     Nanny didn't so much enter places as insinuate herself; she had unconsciously taken a natural talent for liking people and developed it into an occult science.

   • John Locke

     All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.

   • Dryden

     Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.

   • Clarendon

     He insinuated himself into the very good grace of the Duke of Buckingham.

• See also Thesaurus:allude

• insinuation
• insinuator

• insinuate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• insinuate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

• annuities

insinuate

1. second-person plural present indicative of insinuare
2. second-person plural imperative of insinuare
3. feminine plural of insinuato

īnsinuāte

1. first-person plural present active imperative of īnsinuō