connive means to secretly cooperate with other people in order to commit a crime or other wrongdoing; to collude, to conspire. It carries an Arena rating of 1508, earned across 4 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, connive ranks #272 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #766 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #1,675 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,092 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
connive is pronounced /kəˈnaɪv/.
Why “connive” is a great word
To secretly cooperate with others in wrongdoing, or to pretend ignorance of a fault one should oppose. From Latin con(n)īvēre ("to close the eyes, wink; overlook"), from con- ("together") + *nīvēre (related to nictō, "to wink"), from Proto-Indo-European *kneygʷʱ- ("to bend, droop"). First attested in English c. 1600. Unlike "conspire," which denotes an active, joint plot toward a specific end, or "overlook," which suggests an innocent failure to see, to connive is to engage in a sin of omission with a knowing, complicit wink. It is the shopkeeper who sees the teenager slip a candy bar into a pocket and turns to rearrange the display, the neighbor who hears cries through thin walls and adjusts the television volume, the boardroom's deliberate silence when fraud is mentioned—a quiet betrayal enacted by the gentle droop of the eyelid that permits darkness to pass unchallenged.
Etymology
From French conniver (“to ignore and thus become complicit in wrongdoing”), or directly from its etymon Latin con(n)īvēre (“close or screw up the eyes, blink, wink; overlook, turn a blind eye, connive”) (perhaps alluding to two persons involved in a scheme together winking to each other), from con- (prefix indicating a being or bringing together of several objects) + *nīvēre (related to nictō (“to blink, wink”), from Proto-Indo-European *kneygʷʰ- (“to bend, droop”)).
verb
- To secretly cooperate with other people in order to commit a crime or other wrongdoing; to collude, to conspire.e.g.“I might say, / That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives / With God's relations set in time and space; [...]” — 1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Drama of Exile”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 7:
- Of parts of a plant: to be converging or in close contact; to be connivent.
- Often followed by at: to pretend to be ignorant of something in order to escape blame; to ignore or overlook a fault deliberately.
- To open and close the eyes rapidly; to wink.e.g.“The artist is to teach them how to nod judiciously, and to connive with either eye, and, in a word, the whole practice of political grimace.” — 1712 February 29 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “MONDAY, February 19, 1711–1712”, in The Spectator, number 305; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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