Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To offer for consideration or action; propose.
  • transitive verb To express or say indirectly.
  • transitive verb To make evident indirectly; intimate or imply.
  • transitive verb To bring or call to mind by logic or association; evoke.
  • transitive verb To serve as or provide a motive for; prompt or demand.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To place before another's mind problematically; hint; intimate; insinuate; introduce to another's mind by the prompting of an indirect or mediate association.
  • To act, as an idea, so as to call up (another idea) by virtue either of an association or of a natural connection between the ideas.
  • To seduce; tempt; tempt away (from).
  • Synonyms Intimate, Insinuate, etc. See hint.
  • To indicate, prompt, advise, remind of.
  • To make suggestions; be tempting; present thoughts or motives with indirectness or with diffidence to the mind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb obsolete To make suggestions; to tempt.
  • transitive verb To introduce indirectly to the thoughts; to cause to be thought of, usually by the agency of other objects.
  • transitive verb To propose with difference or modesty; to hint; to intimate.
  • transitive verb obsolete To seduce; to prompt to evil; to tempt.
  • transitive verb obsolete To inform secretly.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To imply but stop short of saying explicitly.
  • verb To make one suppose; cause one to suppose (something).
  • verb transitive To ask for without demanding.
  • verb transitive To recommend.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb call to mind
  • verb suggest the necessity of an intervention; in medicine
  • verb drop a hint; intimate by a hint
  • verb make a proposal, declare a plan for something
  • verb imply as a possibility

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin suggerere, suggest- : sub-, up; see sub– + gerere, to carry.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin suggerere ("to carry or bring under, furnish, supply, excite, advise, suggest"), from sub ("under") + gerere ("to bear, carry").

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