All 6 Uses of
appropriate
in
A Thousand Acres
- In our family life, the inappropriate had always been Pete's special domain.†
p. 79.4inappropriate = unsuitable (not fitting) for a particular situationstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inappropriate means not and reverses the meaning of appropriate. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- And there was the couch that finally came, white brocade, about as inappropriate a couch for a farm living room as you could imagine.†
p. 155.6 *
- For another, I thought it appropriate and desirable that the great circle of the flat earth spreading out from the T intersection of County Road 686 and Cabot Street Road be ours.†
p. 4.7
- Those nights he flexed them: he teased me; he charmed his daughters and included them in the game, even allowing them to decide strategy when his play was at a crisis; he topped Jess's stories, and, in some ways, his style of telling them; he sang verses of songs, both familiar and obscure, that were entertaining, but best of all, appropriate, so that you had private realizations, sharp but silly to express, of how everything that was happening at that moment seemed marvelously to fit—that was Pete's gift, and it demonstrated to me an intelligence that I wasn't used to allowing him.†
p. 79.3
- Now I was grinning, too, though the brightness of our grinning didn't seem exactly appropriate to the conversation.†
p. 124.6
- I was given to know that my feelings were paramount, that it was up to me to establish the degree of closeness that would be comfortable and the appropriate way for us to behave toward one another.†
p. 308.5
Definitions:
-
(1)
(appropriate as in: it is appropriate) suitable (fitting) for a particular situation
-
(2)
(appropriate as in: appropriate from their culture) to take without asking -- often without right
-
(3)
(appropriate as in: Congress will appropriate funds) to set aside for a particular use