invoke

verb
/ɪnˈvoʊk/US/ɪnˈvəʊk/UK

Etymology

From Middle English *invoken, envoken, borrowed from Old French envoquer, from Latin invocāre (“to call upon”), itself from in- + vocare (“to call”). Doublet of invocate.

  1. derived from invocō
  2. derived from envoquer
  3. inherited from *invoken

Definitions

  1. To call upon (a person, a god) for help, assistance or guidance.

  2. To solicit, petition for, appeal to a favorable attitude.

    • The envoy invoked the King of Kings's magnanimity to reduce his province's tribute after another drought.
    • Whatever the pressures that have invoked the Minister's diktat, the outcome is Gilbertian.
  3. To call another ship.

  4. + 5 more definitions
    1. To call to mind (something) for some purpose.

      • After marriage, the man had anciently (but this was anterior to Christianity) the power of life and death over his wife. She could invoke no law against him; he was her sole tribunal and law.
      • It is easier to invoke or to deplore democracy than to say exactly what it is.
    2. To appeal for validation to a (notably cited) authority.

      • In certain Christian circles, invoking the Bible constitutes irrefutable proof.
      • He invoked cadaveric poisoning as the reason for the high death rate among priests and monks […]
    3. To conjure up with incantations.

      • This satanist ritual invokes Beelzebub.
    4. To bring about as an inevitable consequence.

      • Blasphemy is taboo as it may invoke divine wrath.
    5. To cause (a program or subroutine) to execute.

      • Interactive programs let the users enter choices and invoke the corresponding routines.
      • […]the selling price and cost of a particular item are derived by the system through a table lookup and assigned to the item at invoking time.
      • C++ lets you invoke an operator function either by calling the function or by using the overloaded operator with its usual syntax.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at invoke. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01invoke02god03tyrant04governs05govern06control07verify08oath09invokes

A definitional loop anchored at invoke. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

9 hops · closes at invoke

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA