Word.ws English Dictionary

impropriate

impropriate verb: to appropriate for private use.

Verb

impropriate (third-person singular simple present impropriates, present participle impropriating, simple past and past participle impropriated)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To appropriate for private use.
    • And for the Pardon of the rest, that had stood against the King; the King, upon a second advice, thought it not fit it should pass by Parliament, the better (being matter of Grace) to impropriate the Thanks to himself […]1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret...
  2. (transitive) In ecclesiastical law, to place (ecclesiastical property) under control or management of a layperson.

Adjective

impropriate (not comparable)

  1. Of ecclesiastical property: placed under the control or management of a layperson.
    • Mrs. Ellen Gulſton, Relict of Theodore Gulſton, Doctor of Phyſick, a very Learned Man, being poſſeſſed of the Impropriate Parſonage of Bardvvell in Suffolk, did firſt procure from the King leave to annex the ſame to the Vicarage, and to make it Preſentative; and having formerly the Donation of the...1704, Henry Spelman, “An Account of the Worth of This Treatise, Taken Out of the Epistle to Sir Henry Spelman’s History of Tythes”, in De Non Temerandis Ecclesiis, Churches Not to Be Violated. A...

Forms of impropriate

third-person singular presentimpropriates
present participleimpropriating
past participleimpropriated
pastimpropriated

Origin of impropriate

From Medieval Latin impropriātus, past participle of impropriāre (“to take as one's own, appropriate”), from Latin in- + proprius (“one's own”).

Words formed from impropriate

Questions about impropriate

What does impropriate mean?
Impropriate means to appropriate for private use.
What part of speech is impropriate?
Impropriate can be a verb or an adjective.
What is the past tense of impropriate?
The past tense of impropriate is impropriated.

Words near impropriate in the dictionary

  1. improperty
  2. impropitious
  3. improportionable
  4. improportionate
  5. impropre
  6. impropriate
  7. impropriated
  8. impropriates
  9. impropriating
  10. impropriation
  11. impropriations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: impropriate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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