invest

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈvɛst/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (UK):

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• Rhymes: -ɛst

Borrowed from Middle French investir or Medieval Latin investire, from Latin investio (“to clothe, cover”), from in- (“in, on”) + vestio (“to clothe, dress”), from vestis (“clothing”); see vest. The sense “to spend money etc.” probably via Italian investire, of the same root.^[1]

invest (third-person singular simple present invests, present participle investing, simple past and past participle invested)

1. To spend money, time, or energy on something, especially for some benefit or purpose; used with in.

   We'd like to thank all the contributors who have invested countless hours into this event.

2. (transitive, dated) To clothe or wrap (with garments).
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick:

     He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck.

3. (intransitive, obsolete) To put on (clothing).
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, book 4, canto 5, verse 18:

     Cannot find one this girdle to invest!

4. To envelop, wrap, cover.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, ll. 207-8:

     Night / Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes

5. To commit money or capital in the hope of financial gain.
6. To ceremonially install someone in some office.
7. To formally give (someone) some power or authority.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii:

     Madam, whatſoeuer you eſteeme
     Of this ſucceſſe, and loſſe vnualued,
     Both may inueſt you Empreſſe of the Eaſt: […]

   • c. 1603–06, William Shakespeare, King Lear, act 1, scene 1:

     I do invest you jointly with my power.

8. To formally give (power or authority).
   • a. 1626, Francis Bacon, An Advertisement Touching a Holy War:

     For he saith, if there can be found such an inequality between man and man, as there is between man and beast, or between soul and body, it investeth a right of government: which seemeth rather an impossible case than an untrue sentence.

9. To surround, accompany, or attend.
   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:

     The scene was not without a mixture of awe such as must always invest the spectacle of the guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it.

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 35, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 171:

     For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

10. To lay siege to.

    to invest a town

    • 1820, [Charles Robert Maturin], Melmoth the Wanderer: A Tale. […], volume IV, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Company, and Hurst, Robinson, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 216:

      When she related that a band of fanatics, after robbing a church of all its silver-plate, and burning the adjacent vicarage, drunk with their success, had invested the Castle, and cried aloud for ‘the man’ to be brought unto them, that he might be hewed to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal—[…]her young hearers felt a deep stirring of the heart,—a proud yet mellowed elation that never yet was felt by the reader of a written history, though its pages were as legitimate as any sanctioned by the royal licenser at Madrid.

11. (intransitive) To make investments.
12. (metallurgy) To prepare for lost wax casting by creating an investment mold (a mixture of a silica sand and plaster).
13. (intransitive) To cause to be involved in; to cause to form strong attachments to.
    • 2004, Michael D. Garval, A Dream of Stone, University of Delaware Press, →ISBN, page 214:

      From early on in his career, Zola's work as a critic revealed just how heavily he was invested in the literary “dream of stone.”

    • 2014, Sarah Varland, Tundra Threat: Faith in the Face of Crime, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 107:

      She knew from watching him grow up that he didn't let that many people too close to him, but once he did, he was invested in that relationship.

    • 2015, James Graham, Tory Boyz, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 11:

      We decided that it was because he trusted the core beliefs of the Conservative Party, and he was invested in their vision of change in the NorthWest of England where he comes from.

14. (Spanish politics) To inaugurate the Prime Minister of Spain after a successful parliamentary vote.
    • 2023 July 24, Carlos Cué, “In Spain, the left's resistance thwarts a PP-Vox majority and leaves all possibilities open”, in El País‎^[1], retrieved 2023-08-06:

      The outcome also makes it very difficult for Feijóo to become the next PM, because he does not have the support to be invested as such, unless there are changes in the initial positions of key players such as the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).

• (put on clothing): beclothe, don, dress; see also Thesaurus:clothe
• (lay siege to): besiege

• (antonym(s) of “clothe”): divest
• (antonym(s) of “give”): divest
• (antonym(s) of “commit funds”): disinvest, divest

• divest
• vest
• vestibule
• vestment
• vesture

From investigate, by shortening.

invest (plural invests)

1. (meteorology) A designated area of disturbed weather that is being monitored for potential tropical cyclone development.

• ventis