Other forms: assimilated, assimilating, assimilates
To assimilate is to take something in fully, or to blend into a society. Assimilate the information, assimilate into the culture, hard to assimilate.
The social sense is contested: assimilation asks newcomers to become indistinguishable, and integration asks only that they take part, which is a real difference in policy. In digestion, to assimilate food is to absorb it into the body.
1verbassimilateTo take something in fully, or to blend into a society.
“Immigrant children often assimilate faster than their parents and pick up the language quickly.”
assimilate is an absorbing.
as-SIMIL-ate → made SIMILAR to everything else
You take it in and keep taking it in until it is similar to all the rest of you.
hooks ontosimilar
Latin assimilare means to make similar — ad, to, plus similis, like.
Proto-Indo-European
*sem-
Latin
assimilātus
Middle English
assimilaten — to become similar; to make like
English, today
assimilate
Built from
early 15th century, in Middle English; Middle English assimilaten (“to become similar; to make like”), from assimilat(e) + -en, borrowed from Latin assimilātus, variant of Latin assimulātus (“made similar, imitated”), perfect passive participle of assimulō (see -ate), from ad + simulō (“to imitate, copy”), from similis (“like, similar”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European sem- (“together, one”). a doublet of assemble.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA