provide

Verb

provide (third-person singular simple present provides, present participle providing, simple past and past participle provided)

1. To make a living; earn money for necessities.
   • It is difficult to provide for my family working on minimum wage.
2. To act to prepare for something.
   • provide against disaster.
3. To establish as a previous condition; to stipulate.
   • The contract provides that the work be well done.
   • I'll lend you the money, provided that you pay it back by Monday.
4. To give what is needed or desired, especially basic needs.
   • Don't bother bringing equipment, as we will provide it.
   • We aim to provide the local community with more green spaces.
5. To furnish (with), cause to be present, supply.
   • Rome […] was generally well provided with corn.1727, John Arbuthnot, Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights and Measures. Explain'd and exemplify'd in several dissertations

   Synonyms:

   afford, treat

6. To make possible or attainable.
   • He provides us with an alternative option.
   • Plants provide (us) with the oxygen we breathe.
7. (Latinism, obsolete) To foresee, to consider in advance.
   • We have not been covetous, honourable fathers, to change, neither is it now any new lust that alters our affection, or old lothing, but those needful jealousies of state, that warn wiser princes hourly to provide their safety, and do teach them how learned a thing it is to beware of the humblest...1603 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, Seianus His Fall, London: […] G[eorge] Elld, for Thomas Thorpe, published 1605, →OCLC, (please specify the page)
   • As for those that will (by faults which charity hath raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name with the multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it without a rival, for me! I choose...1606, Ben Jonson, Volpone, Dedication, in Gifford’s 1816 edition volume III page 164
8. To appoint to an ecclesiastical benefice before it is vacant. See provisor.
   • provide such natives to the higher dignities of the church1838, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: American Stationers’ Company; John B....