Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Involve \In*volve"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Involved; p. pr. & vb. n. Involving.] [L. involvere, involutum, to roll about, wrap up; pref. in- in + volvere to roll: cf. OF. involver. See Voluble, and cf. Involute.]
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To roll or fold up; to wind round; to entwine.
Some of serpent kind . . . involved Their snaky folds.
--Milton. -
To envelop completely; to surround; to cover; to hide; to involve in darkness or obscurity.
And leave a sing[`e]d bottom all involved With stench and smoke.
--Milton. To complicate or make intricate, as in grammatical structure. ``Involved discourses.''
--Locke.-
To connect with something as a natural or logical consequence or effect; to include necessarily; to imply.
He knows His end with mine involved.
--Milton.The contrary necessarily involves a contradiction.
--Tillotson. -
To take in; to gather in; to mingle confusedly; to blend or merge. [R.]
The gathering number, as it moves along, Involves a vast involuntary throng.
--Pope.Earth with hell To mingle and involve.
--Milton. To envelop, infold, entangle, or embarrass; as, to involve a person in debt or misery.
To engage thoroughly; to occupy, employ, or absorb. ``Involved in a deep study.''
--Sir W. Scott.-
(Math.) To raise to any assigned power; to multiply, as a quantity, into itself a given number of times; as, a quantity involved to the third or fourth power.
Syn: To imply; include; implicate; complicate; entangle; embarrass; overwhelm.
Usage: To Involve, Imply. Imply is opposed to express, or set forth; thus, an implied engagement is one fairly to be understood from the words used or the circumstances of the case, though not set forth in form. Involve goes beyond the mere interpretation of things into their necessary relations; and hence, if one thing involves another, it so contains it that the two must go together by an indissoluble connection. War, for example, involves wide spread misery and death; the premises of a syllogism involve the conclusion.
Involved \In*volved"\, a. (Zo["o]l.) Same as Involute.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"complicated," 1640s, past participle adjective from involve.
Wiktionary
1 complicated. 2 associated with others, be a participant or make someone be a participant (in a crime, process, etc.) 3 Having an affair with someone. v
(en-past of: involve)
WordNet
adj. connected by participation or association or use; "we accomplished nothing, simply because of the large number of people involved"; "the problems involved"; "the involved muscles"; "I don't want to get involved"; "everyone involved in the bribery case has been identified" [ant: uninvolved]
entangled or hindered as if e.g. in mire; "the difficulties in which the question is involved"; "brilliant leadership mired in details and confusion" [syn: mired]
emotionally involved [syn: involved with(p)]
highly involved or intricate; "the Byzantine tax structure"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning"; "intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of refined phraseology"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"- Sir Walter Scott; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations lasting for months" [syn: Byzantine, convoluted, intricate, knotty, labyrinthine, tangled, tortuous]
enveloped; "a castle involved in mist"; "the difficulties in which the question is involved"
Usage examples of "involved".
Gregg and the SCARE aces had been involved in government suppression of facts concerning the Swarm Mother attack.
State legislation involved is found to conflict with certain acts of Congress, and in which the principle of national supremacy is invoked by the Court.
Field involved two horses belonging to Luke Lambert, a coarse, cocksure man whom Adams did not like.
That Adams was never known to be involved in such activity struck some as a sign of how naive and behind the times he was.
Dismas, because of his drug habit, might be involved with the heretics who had recently tried to set fire to the floating docks, but it must be the merest of hints hedged round with equivocation, for the Aedile was certain that if Dr.
Since the 1950s, the mallness of malls has involved a different set of characteristics: a shared parking lot, common ownership and management, uniform and aesthetically pleasing design, clear and consistent marketing goals, a carefully controlled commercial environment, a tenant mix designed to provide variety, and a wide range of consumer goods.
I cannot imagine Sultan Mehemet getting any of his fleet involved in a clearly Roman dispute, not with the bulk of his army away down south fighting the Aethiops and their allies.
Among recent activities on the part of the RAF and in which Fred had been closely involved had been an early experiment in aerial proscription, successful within limits but revealing the surprising fact that the slow-moving bombers available to the RAF at the time were vulnerable targets to Afridi and Wazir snipers on the ground.
Paul was always very involved in the sequencing of tracks on albums and in the running order of radio and television shows.
The time involved was about half an hour, between seven-fifteen, when Phoebe Gunther left the baby carriage and its contents, including the monkey wrenches, with Boone in the room, and around seven forty-five, when Alger Kates discovered the body.
The project involved was then being carried out under the auspices of the RSHA, Amt Six, Section F, in a workshop in Delbriickstrasse, Berlin.
One Partridge report which was not aired involved a criticism of negative personal opinion presented in a news context by the venerable Walter Cronkite, then anchorman for CBS.
After the move, some fights between Angels themselves occurred, but no local citizenry were involved.
Torriti turned in a complete circle, as if he were winding himself up, then asked if Angleton was aware that Philby had signed out MI6 Source Books on the Soviet Union long before he became involved in Soviet counterespionage.
We consider the question involved as one of extreme interest to the Profession, and we shall gladly throw open our columns to any of our brethren who may wish to assist in framing some code by which we may decide under what circumstances experiments upon living animals may be made with propriety.