involve Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. verb connect closely and often incriminatingly
    affect; regard.
    • This new ruling affects your business
  2. verb engage as a participant
    • Don't involve me in your family affairs!
  3. verb have as a necessary feature
    imply.
    • This decision involves many changes
  4. verb require as useful, just, or proper
    call for; require; necessitate; need; take; demand; ask; postulate.
    • It takes nerve to do what she did
    • success usually requires hard work
    • This job asks a lot of patience and skill
    • This position demands a lot of personal sacrifice
    • This dinner calls for a spectacular dessert
    • This intervention does not postulate a patient's consent
  5. verb contain as a part
    • Dinner at Joe's always involves at least six courses
  6. verb occupy or engage the interest of
    • His story completely involved me during the entire afternoon
  7. verb make complex or intricate or complicated
    • The situation was rather involved

WordNet

In*volve" transitive verb
Etymology
L. involvere, involutum, to roll about, wrap up; pref. in- in + volvere to roll: cf. OF. involver. See Voluble, and cf. Involute.
Wordforms
imperfect & past participle Involved ; present participle & verbal noun Involving
Definitions
  1. To roll or fold up; to wind round; to entwine.
    Some of serpent kind . . . involved Their snaky folds. Milton.
  2. To envelop completely; to surround; to cover; to hide; to involve in darkness or obscurity.
    And leave a singèd bottom all involved With stench and smoke. Milton.
  3. To complicate or make intricate, as in grammatical structure. "Involved discourses." Locke.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. To envelop, infold, entangle, or embarrass; as, to involve a person in debt or misery.
  7. To engage thoroughly; to occupy, employ, or absorb. "Involved in a deep study." Sir W. Scott.
  8. (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. -- 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.

Webster 1913