Appropriated

How to spell appropriated

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce appropriated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does appropriated mean?

1. verbTook something for one's own use, typically without the owner's permission.
2. verbOfficially set aside money or resources for a particular purpose, especially by a government or organisation.

Appropriated in a sentence

• The manager appropriated the team's idea and presented it as his own.

• Parliament appropriated extra funds for flood defences this year.

• Investigators found that the treasurer had appropriated company funds for personal travel.

• The council appropriated a portion of the budget for road repairs.

Where does appropriated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'appropriate', which comes from the Late Latin verb appropriare, meaning 'to make one's own'. That verb was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'towards', and the adjective proprius, which literally meant 'one's own' or 'belonging to oneself'. The same proprius root gives us a cluster of familiar relatives, including 'property', 'proper', and 'proprietor', all carrying the idea of something owned or belonging. English picked up the word in the fifteenth century, first in the sense of setting something aside for a particular owner or purpose, and later widening to mean taking something for one's own use, often without permission. The doubled 'p' that trips up writers reflects the assimilated Latin prefix ad- merging into the following p, and the quiet single 'p' that follows in '-propri-' is the part people most often forget to double or mistakenly double again.

How the word is built

• ap- (ad-, to/towards)
• propri- (from Latin proprius: one's own)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ed (past tense/participle)