Word Finder - invent

definition

To design a new process or mechanism.

example

After weeks of hard work, I invented a new way to alphabetize matchbooks.

definition

To create something fictional for a particular purpose.

example

I knew I had to invent an excuse, and quickly.

synonyms

• make up

definition

To come upon; to find; to discover.

I mean, he could invent some story—like, blame me!

But I didn't invent it myself.

I might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it.

Oh, well, you know people often invent things.

According to Strabo he was the first to invent an anchor with two flukes.

William Higginbotham was the first American to invent a video game.

If Mr Roosevelt did not invent this term he literally created as well as led the movement which made Conservation in 1910 the foremost political and social question in the United States.

He is indeed free from the grosser faults of deliberate Critical injustice and falsification, and he resists that temptation to invent, to which "the minds of authors are only too method.

No innate genius can invent fine language.

He was compelled to work the administrative machinery to its utmost, and indeed to invent new methods of extortion.

In the final activity, students are asked to invent the perfect verbal put-down.

I am the run-on lines of lies you invent.

We may gradually invent means of tracing more and more closely the average drifts of translation or orientation, or of changes of arrangement, of the atoms; but there will always remain an unaveraged residue devoid of any recognized regularity, which we can only estimate by its total amount.

At the same time Philo did not invent all the nonsense which he has handed down; he drew upon various sources, Greek and Egyptian, some of them ultimately of Babylonian origin, and incidentally he mentions matters of interest which, when tested by other evidence, are fairly well supported.

By recent systematists 5 genera and from 50 to 60 species of the family are recognized; but the characters of the former have never been satisfactorily defined, much less those of numerous subdivisions which it has pleased some writers to invent.

Its aim is to acquire command over nature by knowledge, and to invent new arts, whereas the old logic strove only after dialectic victories and the 1 Thus the last step in the theoretical analysis gives the first means for the practical operation.

Figueiredo felt he had a mission to restore the drama, and wrote thirteen volumes of plays in prose and verse, but, though he chose national subjects, and could invent plots and draw characters, he could not make them live.

Similarly we may take the farthing as a unit, and invent smaller units, represented either by tokens or by no material objects at all.

Wycliffe was a metaphysician and a theologian, and had to invent a metaphysical theory - the theory of Dominium - to enable him to transfer, in a way satisfactory to himself, the powers and privileges of the church to his company of poor Christians; but his followers were content to allege that a church which held large landed possessions, collected tithes greedily and took money from starving peasants for baptizing, burying and praying, could not be the church of Christ and his apostles.

But the mind, in becoming gradually stored with its " simple ideas " is able to elaborate them in numberless modes and relations; although it is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understanding to invent or frame any new simple idea, not taken in in one or the other of these two ways.

Instead of weakening this aristocratic agitation by the see-saw policy of Catherine de Medici, Marie could invent no other device than to despoil the royal treasure by distributing places and money to the chiefs of both parties.

Monteil did not invent the history of civilization, but he was one of the first in France, and perhaps in Europe, to point out its extreme importance.

You couldn't invent a better one, even if this was completely accidental.

Who doth more wrong than such as invent a falsehood against Allah?

Berliner then might not have been stimulated in 1888 to invent the gramophone.

I always say that I'm basically a born liar, that writers make things up and invent things.

He did not invent the term "sea-power," - it is, as is shown elsewhere (see Seapower), of very ancient origin, - nor did he employ it until Captain Mahan had made it a household word with all.

His response to the problem of societal breakdown was to invent a new category of restraint called the Anti-Social Behavior Order, or ASBO.

To be able to invent recipes, entrees, and desserts that are 100 percent raw organic and yet look and taste cooked, baked or deep fried is amazingly challenging!

Modify standard games to fit the theme or invent your own.

Although the Italians did not invent wine, they took it to a higher level than ever seen before in ancient Europe.

Use zig zags or invent your own parting style.

At the young age of twelve, Ben Franklin wanted to invent something that would make him swim faster.

There are some products you find and think, "Wow - why didn't I invent that?"

I'm always keen to hear from people about their common annoyances that they would like a solution for and then I'll try to invent something to fix it.

The most characteristic difference between writing science fiction and writing mainstream contemporary fiction is that in sci-fi, you have to invent your world, your time and your culture literally from scratch.

In writing fantasy, you have the freedom to invent your own system of magic.

He is attacked by spores and forced to fall in love with Jill Ireland, and is subjected to the ignominious ritual pon farr as Gene Roddenberry tries to invent a reason why purely rational beings might be forced to have sex.

He didn't even prattle on about some alleged personal experiences in a diamond mine in Africa, a search for gold or other such nonsense he was expected to resurrect or invent.

In neither department did any Saracen, strictly speaking, invent anything; but they learned much both from Constantinople and from Persia, and what they learned they largely developed and improved.

It is, for instance, practically impossible to obtain reliable evidence as to the regularity of employment in any industry in the 17th century, and the best approximations and devices we can invent are very poor substitutes for what we really want.

We cannot solve the equation 7s.+X=4s.; but we are accustomed to transactions of lending and borrowing, and we can therefore invent a negative quantity - 3s.

But the inconsistency has in part been explained by Gunkel, who has rightly emphasized that the writer did not freely invent his materials but derived them in the main from tradition, as he held that these mysterious traditions of his people were, if rightly expounded, forecasts of the time to come.

Though Porta's merits were undoubtedly great, he did not invent or improve the camera obscura.

More than a century was required to invent methods of investigating the conditions of the motion of systems of bodies such as Descartes imagined.

Voltaire himself, speaking as a practical man rather than as a metaphysician, declared that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent one; and if the analysis is only carried far enough it will be found that those who deny the existence of God (in a conventional sense) are all the time setting up something in the nature of deity by way of an ideal of their own, while fighting over the meaning of a word or its conventional misapplication.

My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability.

A singer who had pleased his hearers with a tale of adventure would be called on to tell them of earlier or later events in the career of the hero; and so the story would grow, until it included all that the poet knew from tradition, or could invent in harmony with it.

Peaucellier, a French engineer officer, was the first, in 1864, to invent a linkwoik with which an exact straight line could be drawn.

A French king, Charles V., is said to have been the first to invent a police, "to increase the happiness and security of his people."