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Purport vs Insist - What's the difference?

purport | insist |

As verbs the difference between purport and insist

is that purport is to convey, imply, or profess outwardly (often falsely) while insist is to hold up a claim emphatically.

As a noun purport

is import, intention or purpose.

purport

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To convey, imply, or profess outwardly (often falsely).
    • He purports himself to be an international man of affairs.
  • To intend.
    • He purported to become an international man of affairs.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • import, intention or purpose
  • * 1748 ,
    • My practice, you say, refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question.
  • * 1843 , '', book 4, chapter I, ''Aristocracies
    • Sorrowful, phantasmal as this same Double Aristocracy of Teachers and Governors now looks, it is worth all men’s while to know that the purport of it is, and remains, noble and most real.
  • * 1939 ,
    • A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport .
  • (obsolete) disguise; covering
  • * Spenser
    • For she her sex under that strange purport / Did use to hide.

    Anagrams

    *

    insist

    English

    Alternative forms

    * ensist

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To hold up a claim emphatically.
    • (I am defending her; see a similar example in the context below for comparison.)
  • *
    • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud,
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
    • , title= Engineers of a different kind , passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist . Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.}}
  • To demand continually that something happen or be done.
  • To stand (on); to rest (upon); to lean (upon).
  • * 1709 , Venturus Mandey, Synopsis Mathematica Universalis
    • Angles likewise which insist on the Diameter, are all Right Angles.

    Anagrams

    * English reporting verbs