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Synonyms

identify

American

[ahy-den-tuh-fahy, ih-den-] / aɪˈdɛn təˌfaɪ, ɪˈdɛn- /

verb (used with object)

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
to serve as a means of identification for.

His gruff voice quickly identified him.
to make, represent to be, or regard or treat as the same or identical.

They identified Jones with the progress of the company.
to associate in name, feeling, interest, action, etc. (usually followed bywith ).

He preferred not to identify himself with that group.
Biology. to determine to what group (a given specimen) belongs.
Psychology. to associate (one or oneself ) with another person or a group of persons by identification.

verb (used without object)

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.
to experience psychological identification.

The audience identified with the play's characters.

identify British

/ aɪˈdɛntɪˌfaɪ /

verb

to prove or recognize as being a certain person or thing; determine the identity of
to consider as the same or equivalent
to consider (oneself) as similar to another
to determine the taxonomic classification of (a plant or animal)
psychol to engage in identification

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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Present

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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.

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Vocabulary lists containing identify

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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:

identify identifies identified identifying

It is helping researchers pick targets, fine-tune experimental medicines and identify which patients would be good candidates for the treatments.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 4, 2026

Health secretary Yvette Cooper said she hoped simple blood tests such as these would help identify patients needing urgent investigation much sooner.

From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026

Rather than shadow every single agent, Sentra’s data security platform is designed to map out a company’s entire digital network from top to bottom to identify and classify sensitive data, Regev said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 4, 2026

Museum experts have used CT scanning to examine the lock's internal mechanism, identify the correct letter combination and solve the mystery.

From BBC ● Nov. 3, 2026

The fish bone fragments would be sent to a lab where they could hopefully identify the specific species of fish, giving clues to the shark’s whereabouts.

From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen

“What identifies an individual as a king is how other people behave towards him,” says a quote attributed to the actor.

From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2026

Davidson, said Nvidia identifies parts of the AI ecosystem that are not investing enough and puts money into them to fill the gaps.

From Barron's ● Oct. 30, 2026

McHenry says she and her friend, whom she identifies as Andrew, left their seats and went to a foyer, where an usher offered to move them to seats in another part of the arena.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2026

Mayo Clinic endocrinologist Sundeep Khosla, M.D., served as senior author of the study, "A new gene set identifies senescent cells and predicts senescence-associated pathways across tissues."

From Science Daily ● Oct. 27, 2026

While teaching at Mr. William Port Stokes’s school, Vincent identifies with the young boys, which makes him miss his childhood, his home.

From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman

Lewis, CEO of the London-listed group since the beginning of this year, has identified the U.S. as central to restoring Diageo’s momentum.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2026

The judgment said Patel "appears to have been able to live in very comfortable circumstances in the UAE for 15 years without identified means of support".

From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2026

"No health impact has been identified and no loss of blood products is to be reported," the EFS said.

From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026

Responding officers made contact with a resident and identified suspicious circumstances that prompted further investigation, the release states.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 4, 2026

The thing is, I haven’t identified what it kills.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Professor Nick Pearce from Aberystwyth University, who worked on the previous research, said "ruling out potential source areas is just as important as identifying new ones".

From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2026

One priority is identifying the cell surface receptors that recognize BRP.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 4, 2026

Hungary is scheduled to release communist-era secret police files Wednesday, identifying tens of thousands of former informants in a long-delayed reckoning with the central European country's repressive past.

From Barron's ● Nov. 4, 2026

“There isn’t a one-size-fits-all criteria. We really work with the community and the council district in identifying the locations for the trash cans,” Kang said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2026

Just inside, a note identifying the publisher as R. L. Polk & Co, the name everyone uses when they talk about the compendium of businesses and people.

From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023