Daily Archives: April 30, 2011
Infer or imply?
Infer or imply?
It depends on who’s talking.
To infer means to deduce something or figure it out.� It’s often confused with the word imply, since both words refer to something that is not stated directly. Infer refers to information that is going into someone’s head.
Imply refers to information that is coming (or not coming) from someone’s mouth. The person doing the talking is implying; the person listening is inferring.
Let the “f” in infer stand for “figure out.”
