INFER

verb (~red; ~ring) see: bear Date: 1528 transitive verb to derive as a conclusion from facts or premises , guess , surmise , 3. to involve as a normal outcome of thought, to point out ; indicate , suggest , hint , intransitive verb to draw ~ences , ~able also ~rible adjective ~rer noun Synonyms: see: ~ Usage: Sir Thomas More is the first writer known to have used both ~ and imply in their approved senses (1528). He is also the first to have used ~ in a sense close in meaning to imply (1533). Both of these uses of ~ coexisted without comment until some time around the end of World War I. Since then, senses 3 and 4 of ~ have been frequently condemned as an undesirable blurring of a useful distinction. The actual blurring has been done by the commentators. Sense 3, descended from More's use of 1533, does not occur with a personal subject. When objections arose, they were to a use with a personal subject (now sense 4). Since dictionaries did not recognize this use specifically, the objectors assumed that sense 3 was the one they found illogical, even though it had been in respectable use for four centuries. The actual usage condemned was a spoken one never used in logical discourse. At present sense 4 is found in print chiefly in letters to the editor and other informal prose, not in serious intellectual writing. The controversy over sense 4 has apparently reduced the frequency of use of sense 3.