appropriate.
To take to oneself; to claim or use, especially as by an exclusive right.
Meaning & usage
To take to oneself; to claim or use, especially as by an exclusive right.
Let no man appropriate the use of a common benefit.
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
To annex (for example a benefice, to a spiritual corporation, as its property).
To make suitable to; to suit.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English appropriaten, from appropriat (“appropriated”) + -en, borrowed from Latin appropriātus, perfect passive participle of appropriō (“to make one's own”), from ad (“to”) + propriō (“to make one's own”), from proprius (“one's own, private”) + -ō (first conjugation verb-forming suffix).
Suitable or fit; proper; felicitous.
The headmaster wondered what an appropriate measure would be to make the pupil behave better.
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.
Set apart for a particular use or person; reserved.
Of an action or thing: morally good; positive.
Rescuing animals is an appropriate thing to do.
Of an action or thing: pleasant.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English appropriat (“appropriated”), see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.