identify
Americanverb (used with object)
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to recognize or establish as being a particular person or thing; verify the identity of.
to identify handwriting; to identify the bearer of a check.
- Synonyms:
- determine, know, place, distinguish
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to serve as a means of identification for.
His gruff voice quickly identified him.
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to make, represent to be, or regard or treat as the same or identical.
They identified Jones with the progress of the company.
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to associate in name, feeling, interest, action, etc. (usually followed bywith ).
He preferred not to identify himself with that group.
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Biology. to determine to what group (a given specimen) belongs.
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Psychology. to associate (one or oneself ) with another person or a group of persons by identification.
verb (used without object)
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to associate oneself in feeling, interest, action, etc., with a specified group or belief system (usually followed by as orwith ).
He identifies as bisexual. She identifies with feminism. My family identifies Hispanic.
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to experience psychological identification.
The audience identified with the play's characters.
verb
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to prove or recognize as being a certain person or thing; determine the identity of
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to consider as the same or equivalent
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to consider (oneself) as similar to another
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to determine the taxonomic classification of (a plant or animal)
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psychol to engage in identification
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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identifiabilitynoun
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identifiablenessnoun
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identifiernoun
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overidentifyverb
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preidentifyverb (used with object)
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reidentifyverb (used with object)
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identifiableadjective
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unidentifiableadjective
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unidentifiedadjective
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unidentifyingadjective
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well-identifiedadjective
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identifiablyadverb
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unidentifiablyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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identifysimple
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identifiessimple
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have identifiedperfect
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has identifiedperfect
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am identifyingprogressive
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are identifyingprogressive
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is identifyingprogressive
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have been identifyingperfect progressive
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has been identifyingperfect progressive
Past
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identifiedsimple
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had identifiedperfect
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was identifyingprogressive
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were identifyingprogressive
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had been identifyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of identify
First recorded in 1635–45; from Medieval Latin identificāre, equivalent to identi(tās) identity + -ficāre -fy
Explanation
You might identify a Ming dynasty vase, a suspect in a bank robbery, or an ivory-billed woodpecker. Whatever it is, when you recognize the identity of someone or something, you identify it. The word identify is easy to...well...identify when you notice how much it looks like the word identity (a noun, meaning who or what something is). Only one consonant separates the two words in spelling ("f" vs. "t"), and they are close relatives in meaning as well. You can easily remember the meaning of identify, a verb, when you recognize that it’s just a way to express the act of establishing identity — in other words, saying who or what something is.
Vocabulary lists containing identify
Tier 2 Words for the SBAC ELA Items
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PARCC: Language of the Test (Grade7)
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Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
She says the app has come a long way since it first launched in the US in 2014, with machine learning systems which could identify 285 common bird species from photos.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Brandon Nelson of Calamos Investments and his colleagues seek to identify small-cap companies with a “unique edge” allowing them to widen their profit margins as they increase revenue quickly.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 27, 2026
Merlin has often been called a "Shazam for birds" - likening it to Apple's app letting users identify a song playing using a phone's microphone.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Meanwhile, more dentists may identify signs of uncontrolled diabetes and coordinate care with the patient’s physician.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
“I’m studying the reflection in this store window, trying to identify which city they’re in.”
From "City Spies" by James Ponti
Nine percent of the U.S population openly identifies as LGBTQ, double the percentage fourteen years ago.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026
The research also identifies the types of stars most likely to host them.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 10, 2026
The first being the negative association around setting up too pragmatically with Tuchel having built a side that identifies with a more front-footed approach.
From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026
Deutsche Bank strategist Adrian Cox identifies a whole host of companies in the space are also awaiting their opportunity to go public, like Databricks, Glean and Vanta.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 1, 2026
However, when the scene is reenacted many times under comparable lighting conditions by a court investigating the case, the victim correctly identifies the race of the assailant only about 80 percent of the time.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
“You have not identified a single witness who saw David Burke during those 21 minutes?”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026
Police said the teenager who died has yet to be formally identified.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
In Poland's 2021 census, 71 percent of the population identified as Roman Catholic, down from 88 percent 10 years earlier.
From Barron's ● Jul. 27, 2026
When the team analyzed the samples in Krabbenhoft's laboratory, they identified more than 19,000 structural variants in the brown tree snake genome.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026
Three marchers wearing shiny steel helmets identified themselves as construction workers.
From "Because They Marched" by Russell Freedman
"For many years, aging research has focused on identifying factors that increase the risk of disease," added co-first author Ignazio S. Piras, PhD, associate professor in TGen's Early Detection and Prevention Division.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 25, 2026
I try to edit out any identifying details to protect people’s identities, but that’s just me.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026
Bridgestock said the next step is identifying which mining regions are most at risk, so mitigation efforts can be targeted where they matter most.
From Barron's ● Jul. 22, 2026
The method of identifying suspicious accounts United have employed uses third-party software and is largely automated.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026
Still other grammatical functions can be put to work in identifying other roles.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
