[General] Insinuate among people / bring miseries on somebody's head

Marina Gaidar said:

I'm still translating a historical text from Russian into English, and I've got such a sentence: "Behold the demon who insinuated among us many years ago! Do you believe me now that his rotten spirit has brought miseries on our heads?" Do these sentences have a right to exist? I've marked the places which are the most doubtful for me.

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Gillnetter said:

What did the demon insinuate?

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Marina Gaidar said:

Well... how to say... he became a part of a commune, like sneaked into it. I should use some direct object after "insinuate"?

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emsr2d2 said:

I would say something like "He insinuated himself into our group". When using "insinuate" to show that some introduced themselves subtly, you need to say what they insinuated themselves into.

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Marina Gaidar said:

Well... how to say... he became a part of a commune, like sneaked into it. I should use some direct object after "insinuate"?

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Gillnetter said:

I suppose that you could say that the demon insinuated himself into the commune. The problem I have with even using "insinuate" is that you have to select a secondary meaning for this word. The primary meaning of insinuate is to suggest something in an indirect manner, such as, "He insinuated that I came to work later". I would opt for another term - "The demon worked his way into...", "The demon wormed his way into...".

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