verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To thrust upon; to impose.

   "They inflicted terrible pains on her to obtain a confession."

2. 2
   impose something unpleasant wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

visitaccomplishachieveadministerafflictapply

Example

More examples

"You should not inflict any injury on others on any account."

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin īnflīctus, past participle of īnflīgō, from in- + flīgō (“strike”).

Related phrases

self-inflicted

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.