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implicated

adjectiveC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,508 of 15,258leans written

Implicated means shown to have had a part in wrongdoing. Implicated in the scandal, heavily implicated, implicated by the evidence.

It stops short of guilty and is what journalists use before a trial, since being implicated means the evidence points your way. In science it is neutral and means shown to play a role, as a gene implicated in a disease.

Definitions of implicated

  1. 1adjectiveimplicatedShown to have had a part in wrongdoing.C1

    “Several senior officials were implicated in the bribery scandal.”

implicated is a quality.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *pleḱ-

  2. Latin

    implicātus

  3. Middle English

    implicaten

  4. English

    implicate

  5. English, today

    implicated

Built from

  • implicō · Latin — to entangle, involve
  • plicō · Latin — to fold

implicate First attested in the 15th century, in Middle English; Middle English implicaten poorly attested, from implicat(e) + -en, borrowed from Latin implicātus, perfect passive participle of implicō (“to entangle, involve”) (see -ate), from plicō (“to fold”). a doublet of imply and employ.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

implicated in the wild

  • The number of officials implicated below the provincial level are much higher.

    Officials implicated by the anti-corruption campaign in China (2012–2017)

  • The schools implicated in the initial announcement were Arizona, Auburn, Louisville, Miami, Oklahoma State, South Carolina, and Southern California (USC).

    2017–18 NCAA Division I men's basketball corruption scandal

  • The investigation then spread beyond the individuals and teams initially implicated.

    2017–18 NCAA Division I men's basketball corruption scandal

  • The middle third of the bone is implicated, and there is marked displacement and overriding.

    Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition.· Alexis Thomson

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the plicō family

simple

implicated — used about once every 2,648 pages · #7,508 · point at the bar for the others