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Imply vs Infer

Definitions​

  • ‘Imply’ (verb) means ‘indicate the truth or existence of something’.
  • ‘Infer’ (verb) means ‘deduce or conclude something from available information’.

What’s the difference between ‘imply’ and ‘infer’?​

Although both relate to implicit or indirect communication, there is a clear difference in meaning between the two.

  • One synonym for ‘imply’ is ‘suggest’, and a synonym for ‘infer’ is ‘deduce’. If you are not sure which of the two verbs to use in your sentence, a good tip is to swap them with their synonyms to see which one works.
  • Another tip is to think of ‘imply’ as the agent doing the suggesting, and ‘infer’ as the agent concluding something from the suggesting.

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How they’re used​

Example sentences with ‘imply’

  • Strong pairwise correlations imply weakly correlated network states in a neural population.
  • We explore whether technological convergence implies market convergence.

Example sentences with ‘infer’

  • Thus, we can infer that a critical path exists with respect to the coloring c0.
  • The customers could not infer the meaning of product information.