Definition of "insinuate"

And wilt thou inſinuate what I am? and praiſe me? And ſay I am a Noble Fellow?

1610 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist, London: […] Thomas Snodham, for Walter Burre, and are to be sold by Iohn Stepneth, […], published 1612; reprinted Menston, Yorkshire: The Scolar Press, 1970, Act II, scene iii

And, moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses.

1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter V, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […]

‘You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing conscious of a vacancy.’

1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 4, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865

Water will insinuate itself into Flints through certain imperceptible Cracks

1728-1729, John Woodward, An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England

All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.

1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], chapter 3, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […]

Horace laughs to shame all follies and insinuates virtue, rather by familiar examples than by the severity of precepts.

1693, John Dryden, “[The Dedication]”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […] Together with the Satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus. […], London: Printed for Jacob Tonson […]

He […] insinuated himself into the very good grace of the Duke of Buckingham.

1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, “(please specify |book=I to XVI)”, in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the Theater, published 1707

he insinuated himself into the confidence of one already so forlorn

1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], Rob Roy. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown

Nanny didn't so much enter places as insinuate herself; she had unconsciously taken a natural talent for liking people and developed it into an occult science.

1995, Terry Pratchett, Maskerade, page 242