Adequate vs Appropriate - What's the difference?
adequate | appropriate |
Equal to some requirement; proportionate, or correspondent; fully sufficient; as, powers adequate to a great work; an adequate definition lawfully and physically sufficient.
* De Quincey
* Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Empty House
(obsolete) To equalize; to make adequate.
(obsolete) To equal.
(obsolete) Set apart for a particular use or person; reserved.
Hence, belonging peculiarly; peculiar; suitable; fit; proper.
* (Beilby Porteus)
* (Edward Stillingfleet)
* (John Locke)
Suitable to the social situation or to social respect or social discreetness; socially correct; socially discreet; well-mannered; proper.
* {{quote-news, year=2011
, date=November 10
, author=Jeremy Wilson
, title= England Under 21 5 Iceland Under 21 0: match report
, work=Telegraph
(archaic) To make suitable; to suit.
To take to oneself in exclusion of others; to claim or use as by an exclusive right.
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5
, passage=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.}}
To set apart for, or assign to, a particular person or use, in exclusion of all others; with to'' or ''for .
* 2012 , The Washington Post, David Nakamura and Tom Hamburger,
(transitive, British, ecclesiastical, legal) To annex, as a benefice, to a spiritual corporation, as its property.
In obsolete terms the difference between adequate and appropriate
is that adequate is to equal while appropriate is set apart for a particular use or person; reserved.adequate
English
Alternative forms
* (archaic)Adjective
(en adjective)- Ireland had no adequate champion.
- All day, as I drove upon my round, I turned over the case in my mind and found no explanation which appeared to me to be adequate .
Antonyms
* inadequateVerb
(adequat)- (Fotherby)
- It [is] an impossibility for any creature to adequate God in his eternity. — Shelford.
appropriate
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- The headmaster wondered what an appropriate measure would be to make the pupil behave better.
- in its strict and appropriate meaning
- appropriate acts of divine worship
- It is not at all times easy to find words appropriate to express our ideas.
- I don't think it was appropriate for the cashier to tell me out loud in front of all those people at the check-out that my hair-piece 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.
citation, page= , passage=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. }}
Synonyms
* (suited for) apt, felicitous, fitting, suitableAntonyms
* (all senses) inappropriateDerived terms
* appropriatenessVerb
(appropriat)- (William Paley)
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.
- (Blackstone)