I don’t want to make any offensive implications, but I’m going to infer that since you’re reading this, you get confused by the question of properly using imply vs. infer. These two words are related to one another but are actually somewhat opposite in their meanings, which is why they’re so often confused. Allow me to explain.
When you infer something, you’re drawing a conclusion based on information you’ve received. When you imply something, you’re hinting at a conclusion based on information you’re giving. In both cases, all of the information isn’t there—or has not been explicitly stated—so the meaning has to be figured out.
To imply is to hint at something, and to infer is to make an educated guess at what someone means. In other words, when you infer, you’re making an educated guess as to what another person is implying. An implication is a statement, and an inference is a conclusion.
Still lost? Let’s clear things up with a few real-world examples.
We’ll start with a few examples of imply:
As you can see in those examples, you have to find out what is being implied in a statement with incomplete information by using your own reasoning ability. To find out what someone is implying is to figure out what they mean without them saying it explicitly.
Now on to a few examples of infer:
Objects can also make inferences, especially in the context of data-gathering technology. For example:
When you infer something, you are figuring out what is meant despite not having the full story—100 percent of the data, details, or other information isn’t present, so you have to figure it out. That is what it means to make an inference.
Sometimes you might see imply and infer combined in the same sentence. Here are a couple of examples where that comes into play:
In review, here is another way to explain the proper usage of these words: both involve coming to conclusions based on partial information. When you imply, you’re giving just enough information for someone else to determine what you mean. When you infer, you are figuring out what someone else means without him ever saying it outright.
From the fact that you made it to the end of this post, I’m going to infer that you’ve come away with a better understanding of the imply vs. infer question. I can only hope that my inference is correct!
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