Library / English Dictionary

INVENT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Come up with (an idea, plan, explanation, theory, or principle) after a mental effort

Example:

excogitate a way to measure the speed of light

Synonyms:

contrive; devise; excogitate; forge; formulate; invent

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Hypernyms (to "invent" is one way to...):

create by mental act; create mentally (create mentally and abstractly rather than with one's hands)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Sentence example:

Did he invent his major works over a short period of time?

Derivation:

invention (the act of inventing)

invention (the creation of something in the mind)

inventive ((used of persons or artifacts) marked by independence and creativity in thought or action)

inventor (someone who is the first to think of or make something)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Concoct something artificial or untrue

Synonyms:

cook up; fabricate; invent; make up; manufacture

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Hypernyms (to "invent" is one way to...):

concoct; dream up; hatch; think of; think up (devise or invent)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "invent"):

mythologise; mythologize (construct a myth)

confabulate (unconsciously replace fact with fantasy in one's memory)

concoct; trump up (invent)

spin (make up a story)

vamp; vamp up (make up)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

invention (the act of inventing)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Mr. Thorpe had no business to invent any such message.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Cannot you invent a few hardships for yourself, and be contented to stay?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

"I didn't invent it," I pleaded.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But there have been inventors who were not eccentric and who starved while they sought to invent practical things; and sometimes, it is recorded, they succeeded.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

To find out how the brain categorizes auditory input, the researchers invented new sounds using an acoustic blending tool to produce sounds from two types of monkey calls.

(How does the brain learn categorization for sounds? The same way it does for images, National Science Foundation)

Your man has not come on quite as well as you had expected in his training, and you are hard put to it to invent an excuse.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This device was invented three years ago and could reportedly serve military assault or logistics purposes.

(French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crosses English Channel on jet-powered hoverboard, Wikinews)

Indeed, his mood was infectious, for I lay tossing half the night myself, brooding over this strange problem, and inventing a hundred theories, each of which was more impossible than the last.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Although it can be applied to any set of information the term was invented to refer to computerized data, and is used almost exclusively in computing.

(Database, NCI Thesaurus)

The researchers reported inventing a coating good at resisting substances that are sticky and vary profoundly in viscosity across their mass—like human fecal matter.

(Materials scientists invent new coating for self-cleaning, water-efficient toilets, Wikinews)