adequate

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See also: adéquate

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Latin adaequātus, past participle of adaequō (“to make equal to”); ad + aequō (“to make equal”), from aequus (“equal”).

Pronunciation

Adjective
  • (US) IPA(key): /ˈæd.ə.kwɪt/, (proscribed) /ˈæ.də.kɪt/
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈæd.ɪ.kwət/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
Verb
  • IPA(key): /ˈæd.ɪˌkweɪt/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)

Adjective

adequate (comparative more adequate, superlative most adequate)

  1. Equal to or fulfilling some requirement.
    Synonyms: acceptable, correspondent, proportionate, satisfactory, sufficient
    Antonym: inadequate
    powers adequate to a great work
    an adequate definition
    • 1673, Hannah Woolley, “Of Habit, and the neatness and property thereof”, in The Gentlewomans Companion‎, London: Dorman Newman, page 61:
      Proportion therefore your Clothes to your bodies, and let them be proper for your persons. […] Agreeableness […] ought to be exact, and adequate both to age, person and condition, avoiding extremities on both sides, being neither too much out, nor in the fashions.
    • 1811, [Jane Austen], chapter 31, in Sense and Sensibility , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: C Roworth, , and published by T Egerton, , →OCLC:
      Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance […]
    • 1853, Thomas De Quincey, Autobiographic Sketches in Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers, Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, “Dublin,” p. 254,
      in those days, Ireland had no adequate champion; the Hoods and the Grattans were not up to the mark.
    • 1903, Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Empty House”, in The Return of Sherlock Holmes‎:
      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.
    • 2009, J. M. Coetzee, Summertime‎, New York: Viking, page 212:
      John was a perfectly adequate academic. A perfectly adequate academic but not a notable teacher.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Determiner

adequate

  1. A sufficient amount of; enough.
    We have adequate money for the journey.

Verb

adequate (third-person singular simple present adequates, present participle adequating, simple past and past participle adequated)

  1. (obsolete) To equalize; to make adequate.
    • 1622, Martin Fotherby, Atheomastix; clearing foure truthes, against atheists and infidels‎, London, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 208:
      Let me giue yet one instance more, of a truly intellectuall obiect, exactly adequated and proportioned vnto the intellectuall appetite.
  2. (obsolete) To equal.
    • 1635, Robert Shelford, “Theologia Amantis Deum, or A Treatise of the Divine Attributes”, in Five Pious and Learned Discourses‎, Cambridge, page 227:
      […] though it be an impossibilitie for any creature to adequate God in his eternitie, yet he hath ordained all his sonnes in Christ to partake of it by living with him eternally.

Translations

Anagrams

Italian

Etymology 1

Verb

adequate

  1. inflection of adequare:
    1. second-person plural present indicative
    2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

Participle

adequate f pl

  1. feminine plural of adequato
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