Word.ws English Dictionary

insinuendo

insinuendo noun: insinuation containing innuendo.

Noun

insinuendo (plural insinuendos or insinuendoes)

  1. insinuation containing innuendo
    • Truly a man may wish, “O that mine enemy would let me write his Preface! Could I not damn with faint praise and stab with sharp insinuendo?” – to use the labor-saving and much-needed word thoughtlessly invented by the sable legislator of South Carolina.1888, Brander Matthews, Pen and Ink; Papers on Subjects of More Or Less Importance,, page 57
    • It’s sort of an insinuendo, as Matt King says, that your mind could stand a good deal of improving and not hurt it any.1918, Eugene Wood, “Missed It - The Big Idea”, in Boys' Life, Boy Scouts of America, Inc., page 30

Examples of insinuendo in a sentence

  • "It was done away with because of the negative insinuendo."1964, Milton Rokeach, The three Christs of Ypsilanti: a psychological study, Knopf, page 131:
  • Others that have evoked smirks have been “miscommunicado” (from “miscommunicate” and “incommunicado”), “insinuendo” (from “innuendo” and “insinuation”), and “squirmish” (“squirm” and “skirmish”).2017 December 4, Roslyn Petelin, “The horror and pleasure of misused words: from mispronunciation to malapropisms”, in The Conversation...

Forms of insinuendo

pluralinsinuendos
pluralinsinuendoes

Origin of insinuendo

Blend of insinuation + innuendo.

Questions about insinuendo

What does insinuendo mean?
Insinuendo means insinuation containing innuendo.
How do you use insinuendo in a sentence?
"It was done away with because of the negative insinuendo."
What part of speech is insinuendo?
Insinuendo is a noun.
What is the plural of insinuendo?
The plural of insinuendo is insinuendos.

Words near insinuendo in the dictionary

  1. insinuatively
  2. insinuativeness
  3. insinuator
  4. insinuators
  5. insinuatory
  6. insinuendo
  7. insinuendoes
  8. insinuendos
  9. insipid
  10. insipid schizotypal
  11. insipider

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: insinuendo (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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