Make Your Point > Archived Issues > APPROPRIATE
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When you use the word appropriate, whether you mean "correct for the situation" or "to steal from someone else," you're using a word that traces back to the Latin privus, meaning "one's own."
When you think about how the words "proper" and "appropriate" mean "fitting for a specific situation," and when you notice that they have Latin bits that mean, more or less, "to take for yourself," then the words make a lot of sense: proper, appropriate things seem to have been taken into a specific situation, or taken or adapted for a specific person.
Part of speech:
As a verb, "appropriate" is very formal.
"There was some one-inch-wide aluminum tubing under the back porch that Dad had brought home from the mine to make a stand for Mom’s bird feeders. I appropriated it with a clear conscience since it looked as if he were never going to get around to it."
Explain the meaning of the verb "appropriate" without saying "assume ownership" or "inappropriately swipe."
In Lisa Graff's book A Tangle of Knots, people's talents are kept in jars, and, apparently, easily appropriated. Check it out:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
1.
A near opposite of APPROPRIATE, the verb, is
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. |