immanent
adjective
im·ma·nent
ˈi-mə-nənt 
1
: indwelling, inherent
beauty is not something imposed but something immanent—
Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess2
: being within the limits of possible experience or knowledge compare transcendent
immanently
adverb
Examples of immanent in a Sentence
a question as to whether altruism is immanent in all individuals or is instead acquired from without
Recent Examples on the Web
Repatriation, while an immanent and continuous process, is often relegated to secondary status by state actors that prioritize state building, stabilization, early recovery, and reconstruction.
—Jesse Marks, Foreign Affairs, 11 Feb. 2025
Silently, austerely, his work seemed to prophesy a future state in which photography would colonize the immanent world and illusions overtake reality.
—Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2023
Since then, the opera house – though in so many places the art form is dismissed as an elitist art form with little relevance to today’s challenges and mindsets – has emerged as an immanent pole of strength, support, and solace for a city living under the clouds of war and aggression.
—Howard Lafranchi, The Christian Science Monitor, 10 July 2023
But Pynchon’s theory of history offers its own immanent critique.
—John Semley, WIRED, 16 Feb. 2023
But the experience of becoming a parent, as Nabokov describes it in Speak, Memory, suggests a third possibility—one which, if interpreted correctly, is possible to verify empirically: that death and rebirth are immanent in life itself.
—Ryan Ruby, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
Blackness in abstraction, as the curator Adrienne Edwards has written, is a more capacious and immanent model of artistic creation than many of our institutions can handle.
—Jason Farago, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2022
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Jesse Marks, Foreign Affairs, 11 Feb. 2025
Silently, austerely, his work seemed to prophesy a future state in which photography would colonize the immanent world and illusions overtake reality.
—Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2023
Since then, the opera house – though in so many places the art form is dismissed as an elitist art form with little relevance to today’s challenges and mindsets – has emerged as an immanent pole of strength, support, and solace for a city living under the clouds of war and aggression.
—Howard Lafranchi, The Christian Science Monitor, 10 July 2023
But Pynchon’s theory of history offers its own immanent critique.
—John Semley, WIRED, 16 Feb. 2023
But the experience of becoming a parent, as Nabokov describes it in Speak, Memory, suggests a third possibility—one which, if interpreted correctly, is possible to verify empirically: that death and rebirth are immanent in life itself.
—Ryan Ruby, Harper’s Magazine , 26 Oct. 2022
Blackness in abstraction, as the curator Adrienne Edwards has written, is a more capacious and immanent model of artistic creation than many of our institutions can handle.
—Jason Farago, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2022
Cite this Entry
“Immanent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immanent. Accessed 3 Nov. 2025.
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