Library / English Dictionary

INFLICT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Impose something unpleasant

Example:

The principal visited his rage on the students

Synonyms:

bring down; impose; inflict; visit

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

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

communicate; intercommunicate (transmit thoughts or feelings)

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

dictate; order; prescribe (issue commands or orders for)

intrude; obtrude (thrust oneself in as if by force)

clamp (impose or inflict forcefully)

give (inflict as a punishment)

foist (to force onto another)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something on somebody

Derivation:

infliction (an act causing pain or damage)

Credits

 Context examples: 

If it be so, if I have been misled by such error to inflict pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

But I hardly know—the misery that you have inflicted—I hardly know what could have made it worse.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Isabella could not be aware of the pain she was inflicting; but it was a degree of wilful thoughtlessness which Catherine could not but resent.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Mary had no feelings to make her respect her sister's in a common way, but she was perfectly unsuspicious of being inflicting any peculiar wound.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

I threw open the window, reopening by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in the bedroom that morning.

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

She must be under some sort of penance, inflicted either by the Campbells or herself.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

They had each been stabbed, it seems, and the Hungarian police were of opinion that they had quarreled and had inflicted mortal injuries upon each other.

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

Issue associated with damage inflicted upon the device or device components from water vapor or water in the immediate environment in which the device is being used.

(Moisture Damage to Medical Device, Food and Drug Administration)

Damage inflicted on the soft tissues and their supporting structures as the direct or indirect result of an external force, with or without disruption of structural continuity.

(Connective and Soft Tissue Injury, NCI Thesaurus)

Damage inflicted on the body as the direct or indirect result of an external force, with or without disruption of structural continuity.

(Injury, NCI Thesaurus)