• implicate •
Pronunciation: im-plê-kayt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. To involve or connect with some wrongdoing. 2. To entail, imply. 3. (Archaic) To interfold, entwine, fold or twist together.
Notes: Here is a word related to the adjective plicate "folded like a fan", but only historically (see Word History). It shares a historical source with imply. It comes with two nouns, implicature "an instance of intentionally implying by unspoken intent" and implication "implicature, the act of implicating". It has only one adjective, implicatory.
In Play: Usually, this word implies wrong-doing: "Celia Feight said nothing to implicate Guy Noir in putting a frog in the water cooler." However, it needn't: "The mind implicates first and foremost the brain."
Word History: Today's Good Word was made from implicatus, the past participle of implicare "to entwine, entangle, involve", comprising an assimilated form of in "in(to)" + plicare "to fold". Plicare is what Latin made of PIE plek'-/plok'- "to braid, weave". We find evidence of this word in German Flechte "braid, plait", Icelandic flétta "braid, plait", English flax (flaks), Czech splést "to braid", Russian plesti "to braid, weave", Polish pleść "to braid", Serbian plesati "to braid", and Albanian plaf "horse blanket". By the time implicare reached Old French it had been worn down to emplier, which English also borrowed for its imply.
