Word.ws English Dictionary

insinuates

insinuates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of insinuate.

Meaning of insinuate

Verb

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.
    • Water will insinuate itself into Flints through certain imperceptible Cracks1728-1729, John Woodward, An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England
  3. (broadly, figuratively) To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.
    • 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.1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 3, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC

See all 4 meanings of insinuate

Questions about insinuates

What is insinuates the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Insinuates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of insinuate.

Words near insinuates in the dictionary

  1. insinew
  2. insinewed
  3. insinuant
  4. insinuate
  5. insinuated
  6. insinuates
  7. insinuateth
  8. insinuating
  9. insinuatingly
  10. insinuatingness
  11. insinuation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: insinuates (page history and authors); insinuate (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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