These words indicate the sowing or embedding of something in a receiving medium. Implant has the widest range of application. It can refer to a fixing or rooting in the ground: implanting the seedlings in a diamond pattern; implanting the flagpole at the top of the hill. It can refer to the inserting in tissue of a graft or device: a cutting implanted under the bark of the tree; implanting a kidney of the donor in his critically ill twin brother; implanting a plastic valve in the patient’s heart. More generally, however, the word refers to the fixing of an idea in the mind, usually in the context of the educating of a child or student by a parent or teacher: a sense of decency implanted in him by his upbringing. In this use, the establishing of rudimentary principles or attitudes is usually suggested, but rote training is not necessarily the technique by which the implanting is done. In any case, a deeply rooted and unshakable transfer of attitude or knowledge is implied. Such a fixing of ideas in one’s own mind is not usually suggested by the word, but an unconscious process may be indicated, or even the fixing of qualities by heredity rather than environment: an innate curiosity that seems to have been implanted in him from birth. The word can also, at its most general, suggest the informing or propagandizing of any audience, whether overtly or subliminally: assumptions about co-operation and competition that each culture implants in its members.

Inseminate can still reflect its derivation by referring literally to the sowing of seed in soil. Much more commonly, however, the word refers to the introducing of semen into the vagina or, more rarely, to the implanting of ideas in the mind: studying the reproductive cycle from the inseminating of sperm to the birth of the child; means for artificially inseminating livestock; teachers who inseminate a respect for authority in their students.

Infuse , in its original Latin form, meant to pour in. it now carries a suggestion of that pouring in in its reference to the introduction of something, as a quality, feeling or idea into a receiving medium. Such introduction, it is implied, lends the medium inspiration, animation or new significance: to infuse life into a dull party. Imbue has much the same connotation as infuse , but, whereas infuse may indicate a temporary or superficial influence, imbue more often points to a change that deeply affects the receiving medium. Another difference between the two words is the fact that imbue takes for its object the thing affected rather than the thing introduced: to imbue a man with confidence.

Ingrain means to impress firmly on the mind or character. The word, which is used almost exclusively in the passive or past participle, is like imbue in denoting an affecting influence that works into the inmost texture or grain of the receiving medium: a deep respect for the truth had been ingrained in the child.

The remaining pair are restricted solely to the context of learning. Instil suggests a slow, subtle, possibly gentle transfer of attitude more than facts, one that reflects its derivation from a word meaning to put in by drops. Most often instil suggests a conscious imparting to someone who is, at most, only partially aware of the process: striving to instil in her son a hatred for his father; understanding how carefully his psychiatrist worked to instil in him an attitude of perfect trust; seeing how blindly everything in his drab environment had worked to instil within him a rage against the established order; nations that, without even realizing it, instil in their citizens an unexamined fear of outsiders. Instil is the only one of these words, furthermore, that can possibly suggest the development of an attitude within oneself: a historian who has not instilled in himself a proper objectivity towards the period he is treating.

Inculcate limits this range of possibilities in instil to one situation, that in which both teacher and student are well aware of the learning process under way; a further limiting exists in that the word refers specifically to an ingraining of facts, ideas or attitudes by the technique of laborious repetition: a generation of students that had not been inculcated with the rules of grammar.

• English spelling cannot be reasoned out; it must be inculcated , example by insufferable example.

The word more recently ahs taken on a disapproving tone to refer to the deliberate ingraining of propaganda or flagrant falsehoods in unsuspecting subjects: inculcating the doctrines of race hatred in innocent children.