supply

Verb

supply (third-person singular simple present supplies, present participle supplying, simple past and past participle supplied)

1. (transitive) To provide (something), to make (something) available for use.
   • to supply money for the war

   Synonyms:

   fulfill

2. (transitive) To furnish or equip with.
   • to supply a furnace with fuel; to supply soldiers with ammunition

   Synonyms:

   line

3. (transitive) To fill up, or keep full.
   • Rivers are supplied by smaller streams.
4. (transitive) To compensate for, or make up a deficiency of.
   • It was objected against him that he had never experienced love. Whereupon he arose, left the society, and made it a point not to return to it until he considered that he had supplied the defect.1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque
5. (transitive) To serve instead of; to take the place of.
   • Burning ships the banished sun supply.1666, Edmund Waller, Instructions to a Painter
   • The sun was set, and Vesper, to supply
     His absent beams, had lighted up the sky.1700, [John] Dryden, “The Flower and the Leaf: Or, The Lady in the Arbour. A Vision.”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
6. (intransitive) To act as a substitute.
7. (transitive) To fill temporarily; to serve as substitute for another in, as a vacant place or office; to occupy; to have possession of.
   • to supply a pulpit

Noun

supply (countable and uncountable, plural supplies)

1. (uncountable) The act of supplying.
2. (countable) An amount of something supplied.
   • A supply of good drinking water is essential.
   • She said, "China has always had a freshwater supply problem with 20 percent of the world’s population but only 7 percent of its freshwater".
3. The market force that causes sellers to be both willing and able to sell a good or service, as measured by the amount of that good or service that is currently available to be bought at any given price point; the amount itself.
   • Supply and demand ebb and flow in a complex interplay.
   • The supply of timber to the region's mills was lower than expected this month, owing to transport problems posed by wildfires.

   Antonyms:

   demand

4. (in plural) Provisions.
   • They are busy laying in supplies for the coming winter.
5. (in plural) An amount of money provided, as by Parliament or Congress, to meet the annual national expenditures.
   • to vote supplies
6. Somebody, such as a teacher or clergyman, who temporarily fills the place of another; a substitute.

Adverb

IPA/ˈsʌp.li/

supply (comparative more supply, superlative most supply)

1. Supplely: in a supple manner, with suppleness.
   • His voice was playful and full; his back was bent supply.1906, Ford Madox Ford, The fifth queen: and how she came to court, page 68
   • […] the rain struck on her head as she bent supply to the movements of the pony, while it scrambled up the bank to the sheltering trees. For a couple of miles the path ran through woods alive with the varied voices of the rain, […]1938, David Leslie Murray, Commander of the mists