insinuate

verb

1. To hint; to suggest tacitly (usually something bad) while avoiding a direct statement.

   “She insinuated that her friends had betrayed her.”

   “And wilt thou inſinuate what I am? and praiſe me? And ſay I am a Noble Fellow?”

   “And, moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses.”

   “‘You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing conscious of a vacancy.’”

2. (rare)To creep, wind, or flow into; to enter gently, slowly, or imperceptibly, as into crevices.

   “1728-1729, John Woodward, An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England Water will insinuate itself into Flints through certain imperceptible Cracks”

   “Some speakers allow the sound of r to insinuate itself between the a and s of wash”

3. (broadly, figuratively)To ingratiate; to obtain access to or introduce something by subtle, cunning or artful means.

   “All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.”

   “Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.”

   “He[…] insinuated himself into the very good grace of the Duke of Buckingham.”

   “[…] he insinuated himself into the confidence of one already so forlorn—[…]”

   “Nanny didn't so much enter places as insinuate herself; she had unconsciously taken a natural talent for liking people and developed it into an occult science.”

adj

1. (obsolete)Insinuated.

   “The great mistery of Christes passyon […] lyttle and lyttle at sundry seasons to bee sygnifyed and insinuate conueniently to man.”