appropriate — English Dictionary

Verb

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

   Usage

   • Transitive

   Examples

   Let no man appropriate the use of a common benefit.

   More examples (4)

   "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.

   We made an odd party before the arrival of the Ten, particularly when the Celebrity dropped in for lunch or dinner. He could not be induced to remain permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he appropriated a Hempstead cart from the Mohair stables and made the trip sometimes twice in a day.

   On the morning after the one-day strike, October 4, one of the Type 4s on crew-training, No. D169, was appropriated to head the 3 a.m. mail to Hull, as no steam locomotive had been lit up and the usual Hull Type 3 was not available; [...].

   Loitering, panhandling, soliciting prostitution, graffiti writing―these activities [are claimed to] foster serious criminality. As a result, disorder in itself has become a harm that justifies the criminal sanction. By appropriating harm in this way, the order-maintenance approach to criminal justice has disarmed the traditional progressive 1960s response of "no harm."

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

   Usage

   • Transitive

   Examples

   A spot of ground is appropriated for a garden.

   to appropriate money for the increase of the navy

   More examples (1)

   2012, The Washington Post, David Nakamura and Tom Hamburger, "Put armed police in every school, NRA urges" "I call on Congress today to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation," LaPierre said.

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

   Usage

   • UK usage
   • Transitive

   Examples

   Some [benefices] were appropriated to secular ecclesiastical corporations

4. To make suitable to; to suit.

   Usage

   • Archaic
   • Transitive

   Examples

   More examples (3)

   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 [...]

Adjective

1. Suitable or fit; proper; felicitous.

   Examples

   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

   More examples (2)

   appropriate acts of divine worship

   But some discussion of the complex relationship between “allohistory” and sf is appropriate here, as the genres overlap in certain ways. Classical allohistory— such as Trevelyan's "What if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo?" and Churchill's "If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg" —is a rigorously consistent thought-experiment in historical causality.

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

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   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.

   More examples (1)

   With such focus from within the footballing community this week on Remembrance Sunday, there was something appropriate about Colchester being the venue for last night’s game. Troops from the garrison town formed a guard of honour for both sets of players, who emerged for the national anthem with poppies proudly stitched into their tracksuit jackets.

3. Set apart for a particular use or person; reserved.

   Usage

   • Obsolete

4. Of an action or thing: morally good; positive.

   Examples

   Rescuing animals is an appropriate thing to do.

5. Of an action or thing: pleasant.

Adjective

1. suitable for a particular person or place or condition etc

   Antonyms

   inappropriate

   Examples

   a book not appropriate for children

   a funeral conducted the appropriate solemnity

   More examples (1)

   it seems that an apology is appropriate

2. meant or adapted for an occasion or use

   Synonyms

   suitablesuited

   Examples

   a tractor suitable (or fit) for heavy duty

   not an appropriate (or fit) time for flippancy

Verb

1. give or assign a resource to a particular person or cause

   Synonyms

   allowearmarkset asidereserve

   Broader terms

   assignallotportion

   Examples

   I will earmark this money for your research

   She sets aside time for meditation every day

2. take possession of by force, as after an invasion

   Synonyms

   captureseizeconquer

   Broader terms

   assumeusurpseizetake overarrogate

   Examples

   the invaders seized the land and property of the inhabitants

   The army seized the town

   More examples (1)

   The militia captured the castle