innuendo means A derogatory hint or reference to, or (often sexual) insinuation about, a person or thing. It carries an Arena rating of 1671, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, innuendo ranks #420 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #483 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #770 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #1,016 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
innuendo is pronounced /ˌɪnjuˈɛndəʊ/.
Why “innuendo” is a great word
An oblique remark or hint, typically suggestive or disparaging, conveyed indirectly rather than stated outright. From the Latin innuendo ("by nodding"), ablative of innuendum ("a nodding"), gerund of innuere ("to give a nod, to signal"). Unlike an "allusion," a general and often neutral indirect reference, or an "insinuation," the slow and malicious implantation of a thought, an innuendo is a single, deftly placed inflection. It is the lifted eyebrow across a crowded room, the deliberate pause in a sentence, the artful choice of an ambiguous word that hangs in the air like a perfume—a compact form of implication that lets the speaker share the blame with the audience’s own imagination, the understanding that some weapons cut deeper when the hand remains unseen.
Etymology
From the Latin innuendō (“by nodding”), ablative singular form of innuendum (“a nodding”), gerund of innuō (“to give a nod”).
noun
- A derogatory hint or reference to, or (often sexual) insinuation about, a person or thing.e.g.“She made a devious innuendo about her opponent, who was embarrassed.”
- A remark that is suggestive of something sexual without stating it explicitly.e.g.“We were both quite good friends and apart from the playful innuendos about having an affair together we never really did anything.” — 1995, Bunmi Sofola, Yours Sincerely: Selected Writings of Bunmi Sofola:
- A rhetorical device with an omitted but obvious conclusion, made to increase the force of an argument.
- Part of a pleading in cases of libel and slander, pointing out what and who was meant by the libellous matter or description.
verb
- To interpret (something libellous or slanderous) in terms of what was implied.e.g.“A statement that a person's presence at a certain club may be "irksome," may be innuendoed that the person is of such bad character as not to be a fit associate with honourable men.” — 1894, Frank Towers Cooper, A Handbook of the Law of Defamation and Verbal Injury, page 119:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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