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/ɪmpˈoʊz/ Listen

verb

Impose v. t. (past & past part. imposed; pres. part. imposing)

To lay on; to set or place; to put; to deposit. "Cakes of salt and barley (she) did impose Within a wicker basket."

To lay as a charge, burden, tax, duty, obligation, command, penalty, etc.; to enjoin; to levy; to inflict; as, to impose a toll or tribute. "What fates impose, that men must needs abide." "Death is the penalty imposed." "Thou on the deep imposest nobler laws."

(Eccl.) To lay on, as the hands, in the religious rites of confirmation and ordination.

(Print.) To arrange in proper order on a table of stone or metal and lock up in a chase for printing; said of columns or pages of type, forms, etc.

Impose v. i. To practice tricks or deception.

To impose on or To impose upon,

(a)

to pass or put a trick on; to delude; to cheat; to defraud. "He imposes on himself, and mistakes words for things."

(b)

to place an unwelcome burden or obligation on (another person); as, she imposed on her friend to drive her daughter to school.

(c)

to take unfair advantage of (a person, a friendship); as, he imposed on his friendship with The Mayor to gain business.

noun

Impose n. A command; injunction. (Obs.)

See images of 'Impose'

Etymology of 'Impose'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Impose" Quotes from Famous Books

... was too narrow to let him see the growth of government and laws as a co-ordinate process, flowing from the growth of all the other parts and organs of society, and advancing in more or less equal step along with them. He could begin with nothing short of an absolute legislator, who should impose a system from without by a single act, a structure hit upon once for all by his individual wisdom, not slowly wrought out by many minds, with popular assent and co-operation, at the suggestion of ...

— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... in 1960 to allow its protectorate to join with Italian Somaliland and form the new nation of Somalia. In 1969, a coup headed by Mohamed SIAD Barre ushered in an authoritarian socialist rule that managed to impose a degree of stability in the country for a couple of decades. After the regime's collapse early in 1991, Somalia descended into turmoil, factional fighting, and anarchy. In May 1991, northern clans declared an independent Republic of Somaliland that now includes the administrative regions ...

— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... to impose classical measures on English poetry more blest in their results. The very men on whom the literary Romanizers had fixed their hopes were the first to abandon the enterprise in despair. If any genius was equal to the task of naturalizing hexameters in a language where strict quantity ...

— English literary criticism • Various

... Skinner, Esq. We should have sought to render an acceptable service to our agricultural readers, by giving a chapter from the Supplement, 'On the Relations between Man and the Domestic Animals, especially the Horse, and the Obligations they impose;' or the one on 'The Form of Animals;' but that either one of them would overrun the space here ...

— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... wolves, foxes, jackals, or hyenas—differing from their fiercer kindred much as the zebras do from the wild asses, the one form being utterly undomesticable, and the other lending its back almost willingly to the burdens which man chooses to impose. It seems likely that this primitive species—perhaps more than one—whence the dog sprang was not a very vigorous or widespread form; else, as before remarked, a savage would have found it impossible to keep his half-tamed creatures from ...

— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

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