inure

/ɪˈnjʊə(ɹ)/US/ɪˈnjʊɹ/

inure verb: to cause someone to become accustomed to something that requires prolonged or repeated tolerance of one or more unpleasantries.

Verb

inure (third-person singular simple present inures, present participle inuring, simple past and past participle inured)

(transitive) To cause someone to become accustomed to something that requires prolonged or repeated tolerance of one or more unpleasantries.
- Matcht with as valiant men, and of as cleane a might, / As skilfull to commaund, and as inur’d to fight.1612, Michael Drayton, chapter 12, in [John Selden], editor, Poly-Olbion. Or A Chorographicall Description of Tracts, Riuers, Mountaines, Forests, and Other Parts of this Renowned Isle of Great...
- To none of these evidences of a fearful tragedy of a long dead day did little Tarzan give but passing heed. His wild jungle life had inured him to the sight of dead and dying animals, and had he known that he was looking upon the remains of his own father and mother he would have been no more...1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as chapter 6, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert]...
Synonyms:

habituate, harden, toughen
(intransitive) To take effect, to be operative.
- Jim buys a beach house that includes the right to travel across the neighbor's property to get to the water. That right of way is said "to inure to the benefit of Jim".
- If I understand the process correctly, cash refunds are turned into the United States Treasury, but price reductions inure to the particular department and increase its appropriations by whatever they collect.1979, Bernard D. Reams (Jr.), Internal Revenue Acts of the United States, 1909-1950 (page 231)
Synonyms:

accrue
(obsolete, transitive) To commit.
- He […] gan that ladie strongly to appele / Of many haynous crymes by her enured.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 39

inure meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

inure in Tamil

பழகிப் போக

inure in Urdu

عادت ڈالنا, عادی کرنا, خوگر ہونا, پکا پڑنا, پرچانا

inure in Bengali

কষ্টকর কিছুতে অভ্যস্ত হওয়া

inure in Malayalam

toughen, harden, season: ശീലിപ്പിക്കുക, പഴക്കുക, അനുഭവമാക്കുക, കറുപ്പമാക്കുക, ഇണക്കിച്ചേർക്കുക, പഴക്കം വരുത്തുക

More languagesFewer languages

inure in Kannada: ಬಳಕೆಯಾಗು

Examples of inure in a sentence

His wild jungle life had inured him to the sight of dead and dying animals, and had he known that he was looking upon the remains of his own father and mother he would have been no more greatly moved.1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as...
Your insults to myself can be endured, / I am a philosopher and am inured. / But there are insults that I will not swallow / That you have levelled at our gods.1951, Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill, The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (Penguin Classics), Penguin...
Young people all across the continent were inured to a level of public brutality, in words and actions, that would have shocked their nineteenth-century forebears.2005, Tony Judt, “Culture Wars”, in Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage Books, published 2010, →ISBN:
This conflict produces a psychic numbing that inures us to the realities of being tracked, parsed, mined, and modified.2018, Shoshana Zuboff, chapter 1, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:

Synonyms of inure

Forms of inure

third-person singular present	inures
present participle	inuring
past participle	inured
past	inured
alternative form	enure

Origin of inure

From Middle English inuren, equivalent to in- + ure (“practise, exercise”).

Words formed from inure

Words that rhyme with inure

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about inure

What does inure mean?: Inure means to cause someone to become accustomed to something that requires prolonged or repeated tolerance of one or more unpleasantries.
What is inure in Tamil?: Inure in Tamil is பழகிப் போக. See Inure meaning in Tamil.
How do you use inure in a sentence?: His wild jungle life had inured him to the sight of dead and dying animals, and had he known that he was looking upon the remains of his own father and mother he would have been no more greatly moved.
What part of speech is inure?: Inure is a verb.
How do you pronounce inure?: Inure is pronounced /ɪˈnjʊə(ɹ)/.
What is the past tense of inure?: The past tense of inure is inured.

Words near inure in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: inure (page history and authors); inure (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); inure (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); inure (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); inure (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); inure (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-inure.wav.

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