- envoke(archaic or nonstandard)
FromMiddle English*invoken,envoken, borrowed fromOld Frenchenvoquer, fromLatininvocāre(“to call upon”), itself fromin- +vocare(“to call”).Doublet ofinvocate.
invoke (third-person singular simple presentinvokes,present participleinvoking,simple past and past participleinvoked)
- (transitive) Tocall upon (aperson, agod) forhelp,assistance orguidance.
- Synonym:(obsolete)invocate
- (transitive) Tosolicit, petition for,appeal to a favorable attitude.
- Synonyms:solicit,appeal,petition
The envoyinvoked the King of Kings's magnanimity to reduce his province's tribute after another drought.
1964 May, “News and Comment: Minister hamstrings BR workshops”, inModern Railways, page291:Whatever the pressures that haveinvoked the Minister'sdiktat, the outcome is Gilbertian.
2021 August 25, David Clough, “The Sleeper experience”, inRAIL, number938, page61:In May [1995], the court issued an interdict preventing the service withdrawal, pending consultation on the closure to passenger traffic of three short stretches of railway around Glasgow and its hinterland that were only used by the Fort William Sleeper - and for which BR had failed toinvoke standard closure procedures.
- (transitive, nautical, of one ship) To call another ship.
- Synonym:signal
- (transitive) To call to mind (something) for some purpose.
- Synonyms:evoke,bring to mind,call to mind,enmind
1869, John Stuart Mill,The Subjection of Women:After marriage, the man had anciently (but this was anterior to Christianity) the power of life and death over his wife. She couldinvoke no law against him; he was her sole tribunal and law.
1872, Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species:The acquisition of a useless part can hardly be said to raise an organism in the natural scale; and in the case of the imperfect, closed flowers, above described, if any new principle has to beinvoked, it must be one of retrogression rather than of progression; and so it must be with many parasitic and degraded animals.
- (transitive) Toappeal for validation to a (notably cited)authority.
- Synonyms:cite,reference,appeal
In certain Christian circles,invoking the Bible constitutes irrefutable proof.
1969, Philip Ziegler,The Black Death, Folio Society, published2007, page21:Heinvoked cadaveric poisoning as the reason for the high death rate among priests and monks[…]
- (transitive) Toconjure up withincantations.
- Synonym:summon
This satanist ritualinvokes Beelzebub.
- (transitive) Tobring about as an inevitable consequence.
- Synonyms:bring about,incite;see alsoThesaurus:incite
Blasphemy is taboo as it mayinvoke divine wrath.
- (transitive, computing) To cause (aprogram orsubroutine) to execute.
- Synonyms:call,execute,launch,run
Interactive programs let the users enter choices andinvoke the corresponding routines.
1974 August 7, “Wholesalers Gain Basic Facts”, inComputerworld:[…]the selling price and cost of a particular item are derived by the system through a table lookup and assigned to the item atinvoking time.
2011, Stephen Prata,C++ Primer Plus:C++ lets youinvoke an operator function either by calling the function or by using the overloaded operator with its usual syntax.
call upon someone for help etc.
appeal for validation to a (notably cited) authority
conjure up by incantation
bring about as an inevitable consequence
(computing) cause to execute
Translations to be checked
- “invoke”, inWebster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.:G. & C. Merriam,1913,→OCLC.
- William Dwight Whitney,Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “invoke”, inThe Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.:The Century Co.,→OCLC.
