INVENT', verb transitive [Latin invenio, inventum; in and venio, to come; literally, to come to, to fall on, to meet, Eng. to find.]

1. To find out something new; to devise something not before known; to contrive and produce something that did not before exist; as, to invent a new instrument of music; to invent a machine for spinning; to invent gunpowder. [See Invention.]

2. To forge; to fabricate; to contrive falsely; as, to invent falsehoods.

3. To feign; to frame by the imagination; as, to invent the machinery of a poem.

4. To light on; to meet with. [This is the literal sense, but not now used.]