Crossword clues for signify
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Signify \Sig"ni*fy\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Signified; p. pr. & vb. n. Signifying.] [F. signifier, L. significare; signum a sign + -ficare (in comp.) to make. See Sign, n., and -fy.]
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To show by a sign; to communicate by any conventional token, as words, gestures, signals, or the like; to announce; to make known; to declare; to express; as, a signified his desire to be present.
I 'll to the king; and signify to him That thus I have resign'd my charge to you.
--Shak.The government should signify to the Protestants of Ireland that want of silver is not to be remedied.
--Swift. -
To mean; to import; to denote; to betoken.
He bade her tell him what it signified.
--Chaucer.A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
--Shak.Note: Signify is often used impersonally; as, it signifies nothing, it does not signify, that is, it is of no importance.
Syn: To express; manifest; declare; utter; intimate; betoken; denote; imply; mean.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 13c., "be a sign of, indicate, mean," from Old French signifier (12c.), from Latin significare "to make signs, show by signs, point out, express; mean, signify; foreshadow, portend," from significus (adj.), from signum "sign" (see sign (n.)) + root of facere "to make" (see factitious). Intransitive sense of "to be of importance" is attested from 1660s. Meaning "engage in mock-hostile banter" is American English black slang first recorded 1932.\n\n...'signifying,' which in Harlemese means making a series of oblique remarks apparently addressed to no one in particular, but unmistakable in intention in such a close-knit circle.
["Down Beat," March 7, 1968]
Wiktionary
vb. 1 To give (something) a meaning or an importance. 2 To show one’s intentions with a sign etc. 3 To mean; to betoken.
WordNet
v. denote or connote; "`maison' means `house' in French"; "An example sentence would show what this word means" [syn: mean, intend, stand for]
convey or express a meaning; "These words mean nothing to me!"; "What does his strange behavior signify?"
make known with a word or signal; "He signified his wish to pay the bill for our meal"
[also: signified]
Wikipedia
Signify is the fourth studio album by British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. It was released in September 1996 and later re-released in 2003 with a second disc of demos, which had previously been released on the b-side cassette tape Insignificance, and a third time, on vinyl, on 9 May 2011. It was the first album that frontman Steven Wilson recorded with the band on board from the beginning; previous albums had been essentially solo efforts with occasional help from other musicians.
Usage examples of "signify".
In accord with their belief they are clothed at first in white garments, for white garments signify a state purified from evils.
Upon completion, the King should affix his signature and seal to the new constitution, thus signifying his acceptance of all conditions set forth therein.
The analogon is a purely external sign, or index, that must somehow remain purely external in relation to what it signifies but nonetheless function as a signifier pointing to the absent object.
It signified a colossal ego, a man who might easily have given himself an anther and pollinated amaryllises and neighbor ladies, a man who judged the rightness of his behavior only by his own standards, if he bothered to so judge at all.
He was bewildered, for instance, by her new and to him quite inexplicable reluctance to respond to their familiar urinary tune by singing the antistrophe that signified assent, and crouching to relieve herself.
Therefore whatever belongs to the Divine and to the human nature can be attributed to that Person: both when a word is employed to stand for it, signifying the Divine Nature, and when a word is used signifying the human nature.
Or shall they find the gate wide open and triumphal arches erected in every section of the country in their honor to signify that defeat of German autocracy means democratization of every section of the entire world?
To The Shadow, the death of so prominent an individual as Josiah Bartram signified a possible reawakening of crime in Holmsford.
Perhaps, when contemptuously signifying to him his release, the Citizen Saviour of the Country might have thought this benighted aristocrat too broken in health and spirit and fortune to be any longer dangerous.
Crovier understands this to signify that the Romans did not employ a greater force for besieging Antium, than they had employed the preceding year, and which at that time seemed insufficient for the purpose.
It is therefore manifest that the sacraments of the Old Law were not endowed with any power by which they conduced to the bestowal of justifying grace: and they merely signified faith by which men were justified.
A shout rose from the guard on watch, followed by the call of the horn, three blats, signifying that an enemy approached.
On receiving the bone, the man at once smashes it, hastily buries it in a small pit beside the totemic emblem of the departed, and closes the opening with a large flat stone, signifying thereby that the season of mourning is over and that the dead man or woman has been gathered to his or her totem.
In addition, the text contains two instances of a single m with a macron over it, signifying a double m.
But faith in a thing already present is manifested by a sign different from that by which it was manifested when that thing was yet in the future: just as we use other parts of the verb, to signify the present, the past, and the future.