Both Uses of
proportionate
in
Do You Speak American?
- Mexicans, he argues, do not assimilate and become truly American, because they do not embrace American values and ideals: they do not share the work ethic inherited from America's Anglo-Protestant culture; they do not have the same hunger for education; proportionately fewer go to college; fewer have incomes above $50,000 a year; fewer hold managerial positions.†
Chpt 5 *proportionately = in a way that is appropriate in size, amount, or degree relative to something else
- But these communities with heavy concentrations of African Americans often have many features in common: poor-quality housing, private or public; high rates of unemployment, school truancy, and dropouts, of drug dealing and abuse, of illegitimate births, of violent crime; and an absence of adult males, because such disproportionate numbers of them, relative to white communities, are in jail.†
Chpt 6disproportionate = not appropriate in size, amount, or degree relative to something elsestandard prefix: The prefix "dis-" in disproportionate reverses the meaning of proportionate. This is the same pattern as seen in words like disagree, disconnect, and disappear.
Definition:
an appropriate size, amount, or degree in relation to something else