INGRATIATE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ingratiate mean? 

• INGRATIATE (verb)
  The verb INGRATIATE has 1 sense:

1. gain favor with somebody by deliberate efforts

  Familiarity information: INGRATIATE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INGRATIATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they ingratiate    ... he / she / it ingratiates   
Past simple: ingratiated   
Past participle: ingratiated   
-ing form: ingratiating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Gain favor with somebody by deliberate efforts

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Hypernyms (to "ingratiate" is one way to...):

control; keep in line; manipulate (maintain influence over (others or oneself) skillfully, usually to one's advantage)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "ingratiate"):

cotton up; cozy up; play up; shine up; sidle up; suck up (ingratiate oneself to; often with insincere behavior)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Somebody ----s somebody PP

Derivation:

ingratiatory (calculated to please or gain favor)

 Context examples 

Indeed, it was remarkable how well he bore these slights and with what unwearying politeness he kept on trying to ingratiate himself with all.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I may have remarked before that Holmes had, when he liked, a peculiarly ingratiating way with women, and that he very readily established terms of confidence with them.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She seemed to smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a menacing way.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I do not know whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either of us, Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are softer than they used to be.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his majesty’s favour, I told him of an invention, discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

And the lock of hair—that too I had always carried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence,—the dear lock—all, every memento was torn from me.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)