appropriate

verb

1. 1

   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.

   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; [...].

2. 2

   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

   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. 3

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

   Some [benefices] were appropriated to secular ecclesiastical corporations

4. 4

   archaicTo 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 [...]

adjective

1. 1

   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

   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. 2

   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.

   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. 3

   obsoleteSet apart for a particular use or person; reserved.

4. 4

   Of an action or thing: morally good; positive.

   Rescuing animals is an appropriate thing to do.

5. 5

   Of an action or thing: pleasant.

Forms

comparative

more appropriate

superlative

most appropriate

past tense

appropriated

past participle

appropriated

present participle

appropriating

third person singular

appropriates