impinge

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See also: împinge

English

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin impingō (“dash against, impinge”). Compare impact, derived from the perfect passive participle of impingō.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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impinge (third-person singular simple present impinges, present participle impinging, simple past and past participle impinged)

  1. (intransitive, rarely transitive) To make a physical impact on.
    Synonyms: collide, crash, strike
    Loud noise can impinge on the eardrum, causing temporary hearing damage.
    • 1638, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy. […], 5th edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [Robert Young, Miles Flesher, and Leonard Lichfield and William Turner] for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 1, page 118:
      The ordinary rocks upon which such men do impinge and precipitate themselves, are cards, dice, hawks, and hounds […]
    • 1905, United States. Patent Office, Specifications and Drawings of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office for ..., page 1419:
      [...] are bent up at right angles to the plate to form flanges which impinge the opposite sides of the nut, thus preventing the latter from turning. It is evident that the bolt-body proper is in no way mutilated or injured and that […]
    • 1970, United States. Patent Office, Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, page 189:
      In the second or operative position of the hinged prism, the opaque plate mounting the prism is moved out of the optical path so that light from the laser source is transmitted along the optical path to impinge the target at the […]
    • 2016 December 1, Carlos Guedes Soares, T.A. Santos, Maritime Technology and Engineering III: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Maritime Technology and Engineering (MARTECH 2016, Lisbon, Portugal, 4-6 July 2016), CRC Press, →ISBN, page 542:
      In the near field not only the shock wave but also the expanding products of the explosion will impinge the plate which introduces some […]
  2. (intransitive, rarely transitive, figuratively) To interfere with.
    Synonyms: encroach, infringe, trespass
    • 1921, Arthur Leopold Forster, The White Mark: An Editorial History of Chiropractic, page 127:
      For example, if the trophic fibre is impinged there would be too much or too little gastric juice; if the motor fibre is impinged the muscular contractions of the stomach would be lessened; if the sensory fibre is impinged there […]
    • 2006 Summer, Keith R. Fisher, “Toward a Basal Tenth Amendment: A Riposte to National Bank Preemption of State Consumer Protection Laws”, in Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, volume 29, number 3, pages 981–1034:
      It is astonishing that the meaning of a single declarative sentence enshrined in the Bill of Rights has evaded judicial construction establishing, at a minimum, some bedrock level of state sovereignty upon which the federal government can not impinge.
  3. (intransitive, figuratively) To have an effect upon, especially a negative one.
    Synonyms: affect, limit, touch, influence, impact
    Near-synonym: infringe
    • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎[1]:
      “I have tried, as I hinted, to enlist the co-operation of other capitalists, but experience has taught me that any appeal is futile that does not impinge directly upon cupidity. […]”
    • 1971, George Steiner, “In a Post-Culture”, in In Bluebeard's Castle:
      Nothing in the next-door world of Dachau impinged on the great winter cycle of Beethoven chamber music played in Munich.
    • 1982, Patrick O' Brien, “European Economic Development: The Contribution of the Periphery”, in The Economic History Review, volume 107, number 2, page 445:
      Except for a restricted range of examples, growth, stagnation, and decay everywhere in Western Europe can be explained mainly by endogenous forces. The 'world economy', such as it was, hardly impinged [on Europe].
    • 2017, Rutger Bregman, chapter 3, in Elizabeth Manton, transl., Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 56:
      Scarcity impinges on your mind. People behave differently when they perceive a thing to be scarce.

Usage notes

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  • Transitive use (impinge the target) is less common, not included in many small dictionaries, and not favored by Garner's Modern American Usage (2009).

Derived terms

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Translations

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Italian

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Verb

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impinge

  1. third-person singular present indicative of impingere

Anagrams

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Latin

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Verb

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impinge

  1. second-person singular present active imperative of impingō

Portuguese

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Verb

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impinge

  1. inflection of impingir:
    1. third-person singular present indicative
    2. second-person singular imperative
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