invoke

Verb

1. To call upon (a person, a god) for help, assistance or guidance.

   Synonyms: invocate

2. To solicit, petition for, appeal to a favorable attitude.
   • The envoy invoked the King of Kings's magnanimity to reduce his province's tribute after another drought.
   • Whatever the pressures that have invoked the Minister's diktat, the outcome is Gilbertian. - 1964 May, “News and Comment: Minister hamstrings BR workshops”, in Modern Railways, page 291:
   • In May [1995], the court issued an interdict preventing the service withdrawal, pending consultation on the closure to passenger traffic of three short stretches of railway around Glasgow and its hinterland that were...

   Synonyms: solicit appeal petition

3. To call another ship.

   Synonyms: signal

4. To call to mind (something) for some purpose.
   • After marriage, the man had anciently (but this was anterior to Christianity) the power of life and death over his wife. She could invoke no law against him; he was her sole tribunal and law. - 1869, John Stuart Mill,...
   • The acquisition of a useless part can hardly be said to raise an organism in the natural scale; and in the case of the imperfect, closed flowers, above described, if any new principle has to be invoked, it must be one...
   • It is easier to invoke or to deplore democracy than to say exactly what it is. - 1912, William Sharp McKechnie, The New Democracy and the Constitution:

   Synonyms: evoke bring to mind call to mind enmind

5. To appeal for validation to a (notably cited) authority.
   • In certain Christian circles, invoking the Bible constitutes irrefutable proof.
   • He invoked cadaveric poisoning as the reason for the high death rate among priests and monks […] - 1969, Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, Folio Society, published 2007, page 21:
   • Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written claims – but Bir Tawil is not any more a “no man’s land” than the territory once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly...

   Synonyms: cite reference appeal

6. To conjure up with incantations.
   • This satanist ritual invokes Beelzebub.

   Synonyms: summon

7. To bring about as an inevitable consequence.
   • Blasphemy is taboo as it may invoke divine wrath.

   Synonyms: bring about incite abet actuate goose light a fire under send sting cheer draw drive encourage egg on engender evoke excite foment goad grill ignite impel induce inflame instigate

8. To cause (a program or subroutine) to execute.
   • Interactive programs let the users enter choices and invoke the corresponding routines.
   • […]the selling price and cost of a particular item are derived by the system through a table lookup and assigned to the item at invoking time. - 1974 August 7, “Wholesalers Gain Basic Facts”, in Computerworld:
   • C++ lets you invoke an operator function either by calling the function or by using the overloaded operator with its usual syntax. - 2011, Stephen Prata, C++ Primer Plus:

   Synonyms: call execute launch run