Word.ws English Dictionary

imply

Syllables: im·plyUK/ɪmˈplaɪ/

imply verb: to have as a necessary consequence; to lead to (something) as a consequence.

Verb

imply (third-person singular simple present implies, present participle implying, simple past and past participle implied)

  1. (transitive) To have as a necessary consequence; to lead to (something) as a consequence.
    • Correlation does not imply causation
    • The proposition that "all dogs are mammals" implies that my dog is a mammal.
    Synonyms:
    entail, implicate, import
  2. (transitive) To suggest by logical inference.
    • When I state that your dog is brown, I am not implying that all dogs are brown.
  3. (transitive) To hint; to insinuate; to suggest tacitly and avoid a direct statement.
    • What do you mean "we need to be more careful with hygiene"? Are you implying that I don't wash my hands?
    • 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
  4. (archaic) To enfold, entangle.
    • 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

Noun capitalized: IMPLY

IMPLY (plural IMPLYs)

  1. A logic gate that implements material implication.

imply meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

imply in Tamil

குறிப்பால் உணர்த்து, மறைமுகமாகக் குறிப்பிடு, தொக்கியிரு, தொனி

imply in Urdu

اشارہ کرنا, کنایہ کرنا, ملوث کرنا

imply in Bengali

ইঙ্গিত করা, পরোক্ষভাবে বোঝানো, নিহিত থাকা

imply in Malayalam

അർത്ഥമാക്കുക, കുറിക്കുക, ധ്വനിപ്പിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
imply in Kannada
ಹೊಳೆಸು, ಸುಳಿವುಕೊಡು, ಪರೋಕ್ಷವಾಗಿ ಸೂಚಿಸು, ಧ್ವನಿತವಾಗು
imply in Arabic
اِنْطَوَى inṭawā
imply in Persian
به طور ضمنی اشاره کردن
imply in Thai
หมายความ mǎai-kwaam, พูดเป็นนัย
imply in Vietnamese
bao hàm

Examples of imply in a sentence

  • Suppose that A implies B and B implies C. Then A implies C.
  • The man was unconscious, but the paramedics had his implied consent to treat him.
  • Traveling by air gives security officials implied consent to search your bags.

All 40 example sentences with imply

Synonyms of imply

17 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms of imply

Forms of imply

Verb
third-person singular presentimplies
present participleimplying
past participleimplied
pastimplied
second-person singular present (archaic)impliest
second-person singular past (archaic)impliedst
third-person singular present (archaic)implieth
Noun
pluralIMPLYs

Past tense of imply: implied

Origin of imply

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.

Words formed from imply

Words that rhyme with imply

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about imply

What does imply mean?
Imply means to have as a necessary consequence; to lead to (something) as a consequence.
What is imply in Tamil?
Imply in Tamil is குறிப்பால் உணர்த்து, மறைமுகமாகக் குறிப்பிடு, தொக்கியிரு. See Imply meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is imply?
Imply can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce imply?
Imply is pronounced /ɪmˈplaɪ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of imply?
The past tense of imply is implied.

Words near imply in the dictionary

  1. implunges
  2. implunging
  3. impluvia
  4. impluvium
  5. impluviums
  6. imply
  7. implying
  8. implyings
  9. impocket
  10. impocketed
  11. impocketing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: imply (page history and authors); IMPLY (page history and authors); imply (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); imply (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Imply (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); imply (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); imply (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-imply.ogg.

Cite this entry: “imply.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/imply. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.