appropriate

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To take to oneself

   To take to oneself; to claim or use, especially as by an exclusive right.

   • Let no man appropriate the use of a common benefit.
   • "I promise you," said she, after a pause of some minutes, "to wear the last new dress you gave me, it is a triumph of taste!" Lord Marchmont bowed, and appropriated the compliment as if the taste had been his own, not the milliner's.
2. 2

   To set apart for, or assign to, a particular person or use, especially in exclusion of…

   To set apart for, or assign to, a particular person or use, especially in exclusion of all others; with to or for.

   • A spot of ground is appropriated for a garden.
   • to appropriate money for the increase of the navy
3. 3

   To annex (for example a benefice, to a spiritual corporation, as its property).

   • Some [benefices] were appropriated to secular ecclesiastical corporations
4. ›+ 5 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      To make suitable to

      To make suitable to; to suit.

      • Under the towers were a number of gloomy subterraneous apartments with vaulted roofs, the use of which imagination was left to guess, and could only appropriate to punishment and horror.
      • Were we to take a portion of the skin, and contemplate its exquisite sensibility, so finely appropriated […] we should have no occasion to draw our argument, for the twentieth time, from the structure of the eye or the ear.
      • The fellow across the road gives up farming and turns his place into a pastoral bootleggery . Picnickers appropriate the lawn and declare for the proletariat . The sheriff comes , argues with them and they depart , leaving the Sunday [...]
   2. 5

      Suitable or fit

      Suitable or fit; proper; felicitous.

      • The headmaster wondered what an appropriate measure would be to make the pupil behave better.
      • 1798-1801, Beilby Porteus, Lecture XI delivered in the Parish Church of St. James, Westminster in its strict and appropriate meaning
      • appropriate acts of divine worship
   3. 6

      Suitable to the social situation or to social respect or social discreetness

      Suitable to the social situation or to social respect or social discreetness; socially correct; socially discreet; well-mannered; proper.

      • I don't think it was appropriate for the cashier to tell me out loud in front of all those people at the checkout that my hairpiece looked like it was falling out of place.
      • While it is not considered appropriate for a professor to date his student, there is no such concern once the semester has ended.
   4. 7

      Set apart for a particular use or person

      Set apart for a particular use or person; reserved.

   5. 8

      Of an action or thing

      Of an action or thing: morally good; positive.

      • Rescuing animals is an appropriate thing to do.

The neighborhood

• synonymimpropriate
• synonymtake
• synonymsteal
• synonymearmark
• synonymset apart
• synonymfelicitous
• synonymfitting
• synonymsuitable
• antonyminappropriateantonym(s) of “all senses”
• antonymunhappy
• neighborappropriation
• neighborproper
• neighborproperty