appropriate

Verb

appropriate (third-person singular simple present appropriates, present participle appropriating, simple past and past participle appropriated)

1. (transitive) 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.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Prudence in Politics”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 179

   Synonyms:

   help oneself

2. (transitive) 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

   Synonyms:

   allocate

3. (UK, transitive) To annex (for example a benefice, to a spiritual corporation, as its property).
   • Some [benefices] were appropriated to secular ecclesiastical corporations176, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, book, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC
4. (archaic, transitive) 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.1790, Helen Maria Williams, Julia, Routledge, published 2016, page 67
   • 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.1802, William Paley, Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity

Adjective

UK/əˈpɹəʊ.pɹi.ɪt/US/əˈpɹoʊ.pɹi.ɪt/

appropriate (comparative more appropriate, superlative most appropriate)

1. Suitable or fit; proper; felicitous.
   • The headmaster wondered what an appropriate measure would be to make the pupil behave better.
   • in its strict and appropriate meaning1798-1801, Beilby Porteus, Lecture XI delivered in the Parish Church of St. James, Westminster
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.
3. (obsolete) Set apart for a particular use or person; reserved.

   Synonyms:

   apt

4. Of an action or thing: morally good; positive.
   • Rescuing animals is an appropriate thing to do.
5. Of an action or thing: pleasant.