APPLY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Apply

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/əplˈaɪ/ Listen

verb

Apply v. t. (past & past part. applied; pres. part. applying)

1.

To lay or place; to put or adjust (one thing to another); with to; as, to apply the hand to the breast; to apply medicaments to a diseased part of the body. "He said, and the sword his throat applied."

2.

To put to use; to use or employ for a particular purpose, or in a particular case; to appropriate; to devote; as, to apply money to the payment of a debt.

3.

To make use of, declare, or pronounce, as suitable, fitting, or relative; as, to apply the testimony to the case; to apply an epithet to a person. "Yet God at last To Satan, first in sin, his doom applied."

4.

To fix closely; to engage and employ diligently, or with attention; to attach; to incline. "Apply thine heart unto instruction."

5.

To direct or address. (R.) "Sacred vows... applied to grisly Pluto."

6.

To betake; to address; to refer; used reflexively. "I applied myself to him for help."

7.

To busy; to keep at work; to ply. (Obs.) "She was skillful in applying his "humors.""

8.

To visit. (Obs.) "And he applied each place so fast."

Applied chemistry. See under Chemistry.

Applied mathematics. See under Mathematics.

Apply v. i.

1.

To suit; to agree; to have some connection, agreement, or analogy; as, this argument applies well to the case.

2.

To make request; to have recourse with a view to gain something; to make application. (to); to solicit; as, to apply to a friend for information.

3.

To ply; to move. (R.) "I heard the sound of an oar applying swiftly through the water."

4.

To apply or address one's self; to give application; to attend closely (to).

See images of 'Apply'

Etymology of 'Apply'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Apply" Quotes from Famous Books

... Some of us, alas, can never develop it, because we can never let go of shams. We must learn to recognize suitability, simplicity and proportion, and apply our knowledge to our needs. I grant you we may never fully appreciate the full balance of proportion, but we can exert our common sense and decide whether a thing is suitable; we can consult our conscience as to whether an object is simple, and we ...

— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... order did not apply to the cross-road which we now filed into, or the owners of adjacent lands paid no heed to it; for presently, a few rods ahead of us, we saw a snake fence barring the road and a man with a pack on his back in the act ...

— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... to refer, by way of illustration, to the greenback illusion, and to the whole group of spiritualistic disturbances and psychological epidemics. It sometimes seems as if half the American people were losing the power to apply logical processes to the ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Paul spoke, not of one who was Very God of Very God, but of some highest and most primeval of all creatures, Emanation, AEon, or what not. In these later times, when the belief in such beings, and even their very names, have become dim and dead, men have tried to shew that the words of Scripture apply to a mere man. They have seen in Christ—and they have reverenced and loved Him for what they have seen in Him—the noblest and purest, the wisest and the most loving of all human beings; and have attributed ...

— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... method of assisting our ally, that we shall entirely take away from France all pretences of hostilities or resentment, since we shall not attack her troops or invade her frontiers, but only furnish the queen of Hungary with money, without directing her how to apply it. I am far, my lords, from being so much intimidated by the late increase of the French greatness, as to imagine, that no limits can be set to their ambition. I am far from despairing, that the queen of Hungary alone, supported by us with pecuniary assistance, may be able to ...

— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

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