Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Invent

Invent , transitive verb

[Latin inventus, past participle of invenire to come upon, to find, invent; pref. in- in + venire to come, akin to English come: compare French inventer. See Come.]

1.
To come or light upon; to meet; to find. [Obsolete]
And vowed never to return again, Till him alive or dead she did invent. — Spenser
2.
To discover, as by study or inquiry; to find out; to devise; to contrive or produce for the first time; -- applied commonly to the discovery of some serviceable mode, instrument, or machine.
Thus first Necessity invented stools. — Cowper
3.
To frame by the imagination; to fabricate mentally; to forge; -- in a good or a bad sense; as, to invent the machinery of a poem; to invent a falsehood.
Whate'er his cruel malice could invent. — Milton
He had invented some circumstances, and put the worst possible construction on others. — Sir W. Scott