identify
Frequently Asked Questions
- recognize—to be able to tell what something is (and often to know its name), as in He immediately identified/recognized it as a monarch butterfly.
- diagnose or pinpoint, as in My mechanic was finally able to identify/diagnose/pinpoint the problem.
- associate, such as with a certain group or belief, as in She’s known for identifying/associating with the party’s reform wing.
- distinguish, as in Her height identified/distinguished her as the volleyball player.
- establish (who someone is), as in He has been identified/established as the main suspect. Relatedly, to identify someone is to figure out who they are—to establish their identity.
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:
The company obtained court orders Friday requiring Microsoft and Discord to turn over data in an effort to identify the source of recent leaks surrounding the eagerly anticipated video game.
From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026
Interestingly, early editions of “The Settlement Cook Book” didn’t identify recipes such as gefilte fish, a Passover delicacy, as Jewish.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
Owners are legally required to pay taxes on this income, but no one pays if the IRS can’t identify who they are or prove what they owe.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 27, 2026
AI software can identify each open blossom and direct a robotic arm — or a worker — to release pollen with the precision needed to avoid deformed fruit.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
Right now, if I came to my mother’s hut in the middle of the night and I wanted my mom to identify me, I would make this sound: Harumph.
From "Facing the Lion" by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton and Herman Viola
"The significance of this work is that it identifies a mechanism by which a microbiota-derived metabolite can create durable epithelial T-cell crosstalk," Yu said.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 21, 2026
Another trope Hartnett identifies in asset allocation is “Anything But China.”
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 14, 2026
Manivannan, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, was being interviewed about care and carers in society, when host Sindhu Rajasekaran raised the rehabilitation of criminals, saying she could have no empathy for rapists.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
It also requires analysts to use machine learning to analyze and detect risks, including through AI-powered “anticipatory threat intelligence,” which identifies trends or patterns of potential threats before they come to fruition.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
“First, a lookout right outside International Arrivals. The lookout identifies Sara and describes her to the others. Second, someone in the terminal to see if she takes the bus or the tram.”
From "City Spies" by James Ponti
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have now identified a mechanism that helps explain this switch and may offer a way to reverse it.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026
He said a user by the name “Sharilyn” then identified the bird as a purple gallinule.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
In the early 1980s, scientists identified a small number of mutated genes that drove most human cancers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Police said he had not yet been formally identified but he is believed to be 17-year-old David Wynter.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
The thing is, I haven’t identified what it kills.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
The president did not simply abandon his tariff agenda, though, instead identifying new ways to tariff under existing federal trade law.
From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2026
Labels and the maple leaf from the Canadian flag clearly identifying products' origins have proliferated in stores since last year.
From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026
Autistic people of all genders often struggle with nuances of social communication like decoding nonverbal cues, identifying shifts in tone or asking reciprocal questions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2026
They believe the findings could lead to earlier diagnosis, more personalised treatment plans and new methods of identifying health risks linked to heavy periods, including iron deficiency.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
On the screen of her iPad, she plays a relatively primitive video game that entails identifying targets that at first appear in the middle of the screen but get farther out on the periphery.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
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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