Make Your Point > Archived Issues > IMPLICATE

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pronounce IMPLICATE: Say it "IM plih kate." To hear it, click here. connect this word to others: If I ask you to name some close cousins of the word implicate, I bet you could come up with complicate, duplicate, explicate, replicate, and supplicate. All those words trace back to the Latin plicare, which means "to fold, to twist, to lay, or to weave." See if you can recall a few more members of the plicare family: 1. Something pli____ is easy to bend, or easy to fold.  2. A _____plic__y of things is a large number of them. (To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)   definition: "Implicate" has Latin bits that mean "to fold in, or to fold into." Literally speaking, to implicate things is to twist them together, or tangle them up together. We hardly ever use that meaning, though. Most often, we use the figurative meaning. To implicate people is to get them involved in something, or show that they were involved in something, usually a crime--as if you're pulling them into the mess or tangle of the situation. grammatical bits: Part of speech: Verb, the transitive kind: "The video implicated them;" "The letter implicated her in the crime." Other forms:  The other verb forms are "implicated" and "implicating." The noun is "implication." (That's also the noun for the word "imply," which we'll look at in a moment.) If you need an adjective, there's "implicative." There's another adjective, a rarer one. Like the verb, it's spelled "implicate," but it's pronounced "IM plih kit." It means "involved in, or all tangled up in, some situation." You can also use this "implicate" as a noun meaning "a thing that's involved or tangled up in some situation." Lastly, even though the words "imply" ("to hint or suggest") and "implicit" ("hinted or suggested") are very closely related to our main word, "implicate," their meaning is so different that we'll leave them alone for now. We'll probably check them out later, in a separate issue. how to use it: "Implicate" is a common word. It's serious and formal.  Generally, we talk about things (like documents, photos, videos, or testimonies) that implicate people, often in some crime or misdeed: "She was implicated in the robbery;" "Those papers implicated the whole company in this scheme;" "If we buy these products while fully aware of the exploitation that made them so cheap, then we're implicated in that exploitation." We can also get figurative and talk about things that are implicated in some bad process or bad outcome. For example, researchers are always trying to figure out which genes or which areas of the brain are implicated in diseases and disorders. examples: "All I keep thinking about is the note on Balekin's desk, the note that seemed to implicate Balekin in Liriope's murder."    — Holly Black, The Cruel Prince, 2018 "Today's pace of extinction is hundreds if not thousands of times greater than the natural extinction rate. Humans are, of course, profoundly implicated in this loss of life and biodiversity."    — Helen Phillips, New York Times, 6 April 2021 has this page helped you understand "implicate"? Awesome, I'm glad it helped! Thanks for letting me know! If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. study it: Explain the meaning of "implicate" without saying "get involved" or "get embroiled." try it out: Fill in the blanks: "(Some person or group) deserves most of the blame for (some bad outcome), but (some other person or group) is also implicated." Example: "Romeo and Juliet themselves deserve most of the blame for their deaths, but the Friar is also implicated." If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.) before you review, play: Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out. Our game this month is "Clues in Cobbled Haikus." Check out the haiku, cobbled together from the work of a famous writer, and see if you can identify the term it's suggesting.  Try this one today: Cobbled from the work of Ernest Lawrence Thayer, the haiku below suggests which of the following terms: treacly, volte-face, or roi soleil?    Pride, Casey, the cheers,    On him, ten thousand eyes, hope,    Casey's visage shone. To see the answer, scroll all the way down. review this word: 1. The precise etymological opposite of IMPLICATE is EXPLICATE, meaning "to unfold, to disentangle; or less literally, to explain, to describe." But considering how we actually use the word today, a near opposite of IMPLICATE is A. EXPEDITE: to make something happen quicker. B. EXCULPATE: to free someone from blame, guilt, or punishment. C. EVISCERATE: to ruin something by removing its most important parts. 2. In the song "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," the _____ is implicated _____. A. family .. by too much egg nog B. grandma .. with an out-of-control sleigh C. reindeer .. in the grandma's murder Answers to the review questions: 1. B 2. C Answer to the game question: The cobbled haiku suggests the term roi soleil. a final word: I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.