imply

present singular third person implies · participle present implying · participle past implied · past implied · first person past singular implied · archaic present second person singular impliest · past second person singular implied · archaic past second person singular impliedst · present singular third person implies · archaic present singular third person implieth · past singular third person implied · past plural implied · past subjunctive implied · participle present implying · participle past implied

1. transitiveTo have as a necessary consequence; to lead to (something) as a consequence.

   Correlation does not imply causation

   2 more examples

   The proposition that "all dogs are mammals" implies that my dog is a mammal.

   Our upper bound is the best possible, and it implies the existence of low-rank factorizations of positive semidefinite bivariate matrix polynomials and representations of biforms as sums of few squares.

   2016, Grigoriy Blekherman, Daniel Plaumann, Rainer Sinn, Cynthia Vinzant, “Low-Rank Sum-of-Squares Representations on Varieties of Minimal Degree”, in arXiv

   Synonyms: entail, implicate, import

2. transitiveTo suggest by logical inference.

   When I state that your dog is brown, I am not implying that all dogs are brown.

3. transitiveTo 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?

   3 more examples

   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

   Naturally, the river wasn't wrinkled or creased at all— wrong words, implying something unfluid like skin, something unenduring, prey to age.

   2019, Margaret Laurence, The Diviners

   Both French and English had once used parcel to refer to pieces of land that made up an estate, but when it evolved to imply an item of business in both, it retained its connotations of small fragmentariness in French, whereas in English it simply meant a package.

   2022, R. F. Kuang, Babel, HarperVoyager, page 470

   Synonyms: allude, hint, infer, insinuate, suggest, advert, allude, hint

4. archaicTo 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

   Synonyms: envelop, wrap up, ensnare, implicate, enmesh, ensnare, ensnarl, entangle

plural IMPLYs

1. human sciencesA logic gate that implements material implication.