appropriate

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   suitable for a particular person, place, or condition

   That book is not appropriate for children.

2. 2
   verb

   to devote or assign a resource to a particular person or cause

   They appropriated funds for my legal defense.

3. 3
   verb

   to take possession of by force, as after an invasion

   We appropriated the illegally acquired funds.

4. 4
   verb

   to take something for one's own use, typically without the owner's permission

   I appropriated old WPA posters for the homework assignment.

5. 5
   verb

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

   Let no man appropriate the use of a common benefit.

6. 6
   verb

   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.

7. 7
   verb

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

   Some [benefices] were appropriated to secular ecclesiastical corporations

8. 8
   verb

   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.

Etymology

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).