immanent

adjective

im·​ma·​nent ˈi-mə-nənt How to pronounce immanent (audio)
1
: indwelling, inherent
beauty is not something imposed but something immanentAnthony Burgess
2
: 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 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 Like the whale to the Inuit and the buffalo to the Lakota, the animal is at once everyday fact and sacred presence — not symbolically so, but in the sense that the sacred is immanent in all things, manifest in the world, in the land and the people of it. Ligaya Mishan, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2020 But Pynchon’s theory of history offers its own immanent critique. John Semley, WIRED, 16 Feb. 2023 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 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 The spiritual practices that kidnapped Africans carried with them to the United States affirmed the immanent presence of their ancestors. Ron Charles, Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2019 Robinson’s fiction also exposes the vexed terms of our devotion to the wonders of the immanent world. Leslie Jamison, The Atlantic, 17 Sep. 2014

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'immanent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Late Latin immanent-, immanens, present participle of immanēre to remain in place, from Latin in- + manēre to remain — more at mansion

First Known Use

1535, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of immanent was in 1535

Dictionary Entries Near immanent

Cite this Entry

“Immanent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immanent. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

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