implication

Noun

implication (countable and uncountable, plural implications)

1. (uncountable) The act of implicating.
2. (uncountable) The state of being implicated.
3. (countable) A possible, or indirect, effect or result of a decision or action.
   • Dumping waste in the river will have serious implications for the environment.
   • And while that number is expected to shift back slightly into positive territory over this decade, fewer children today establishes an unmistakable implication for tomorrow: fewer adults available as consumers, workers and taxpayers.2021 April 23, Ronald Brownstein, “The racist ‘replacement theory’ has it all backward”, in CNN
4. An implying, or that which is implied, but not expressed; an inference, or something which may fairly be understood, though not expressed in words.
   • Dennis Reynolds: What do you mean what do we need a mattress for? Why in the hell do you think we just spent all that money on a boat? The whole purpose of buying the boat in the first place was to get the ladies nice and tipsy topside so we can take 'em to a nice comfortable place below deck and...2010 September 30, Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, directed by Randall Einhorn, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, season 6, episode 3 (The Gang Buys a Boat) (Black Comedy), spoken by Dennis Reynolds...
   • But we can also take a more analytical attitude to these displays, interpreting the movements as no more than approachings, touchings, and departings with no implication that one shape caused the other to move.2011, Lance J. Rips, Lines of Thought: Central Concepts in Cognitive Psychology, page 168
5. (countable) The connective in propositional calculus that, when joining two predicates A and B in that order, has the meaning "if A is true, then B is true".
6. Logical consequence.