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to inhabit

to inhabit

44 3.6
To be present inside a person's mind or feelings
  • verb
  • /ɪnˈhæbɪt/
translation icon : habitar
  • Not like Mad Men at all, even though they inhabit the same New York world.
  • inhabit a world
  • inhabit a realm
  • characters inhabit a story

All human speech inhabits him, all poetry and myth.

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Examples

  • The way I work is I have to inhabit a space, before I begin designing it.

  • - Why then have you decided to inhabit my shop this evening?

  • I just sort of allowed myself to inhabit that character.

  • And I think we just kind of like, we're really able to inhabit this, this weird place.

  • Actors inhabit completely different characters on demand.

  • We're starting to inhabit more and more tribal roles.

  • They want to inhabit it, and they want to inhabit it on their own terms.

  • And that in one particular way we have to understand that the system as we inhabit it is falsely constructed.

  • We inhabit a world of intersecting secrecies.

  • The writer was able to inhabit the protagonist's mind, making the story feel deeply personal.

Synonyms

to dwell
vsto inhabit
  • Literature
21 4.1

To be present in a person's mind or heart for a long time

is used more for abstract or metaphorical presence than for physical places

How Present

to pervade
22 6.7
to inhabit
44 3.6
to exist
1.0
to occur
910 2.1
to appear
873 1.0

Surface Forms

inhabit infinitive
inhabited past
inhabited past participle
inhabiting present participle
inhabits third person singular

Morphology

inhabit = habit (opaque) = in + habit

The metaphorical sense 'exist in' extends from 'live in', but this extension is not derivable from the modern noun 'habit', so learners would need knowledge of the verb formation from Latin rather than simple decomposition.

Etymology

Inhabit keeps the same idea when used for feelings or ideas, because its root habitare means 'to live'. That's why we say a memory or doubt 'inhabits' a mind — it 'lives in' someone's thoughts.