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adequate

[ad-i-kwit]
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adjective
  1. as much or as good as necessary for some requirement or purpose; fully sufficient, suitable, or fit (often followed by to or for): This car is adequate to our needs. adequate food for fifty people.
  2. barely sufficient or suitable: Being adequate is not good enough.
  3. Law. reasonably sufficient for starting legal action: adequate grounds.
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Origin of adequate

1610–20; < Latin adaequātus matched (past participle of adaequāre). See ad-, equal, -ate1
Related formsad·e·quate·ly, adverbad·e·quate·ness, nounpre·ad·e·quate, adjectivepre·ad·e·quate·ly, adverbpre·ad·e·quate·ness, nounqua·si-ad·e·quate, adjectivequa·si-ad·e·quate·ly, adverbsu·per·ad·e·quate, adjectivesu·per·ad·e·quate·ly, adverbsu·per·ad·e·quate·ness, noun

Synonyms

See more synonyms for adequate on Thesaurus.com
1. satisfactory, competent, sufficient, enough; capable.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for adequately

Contemporary Examples

Historical Examples

  • That which we do not believe we cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often.

    Essays, First Series

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • The subject is a great one and cannot be adequately treated as an appendage to another.

    Timaeus

    Plato

  • She was in high feather, not adequately to be expressed by the plumes, and at once she told him why.

    The Prisoner

    Alice Brown

  • I only know of one book in which the subject is adequately handled.

  • I wish that I could adequately express my thoughts about her, but I can't.

    'Smiles'

    Eliot H. Robinson

British Dictionary definitions for adequately

adequate

adjective
  1. able to fulfil a need or requirement without being abundant, outstanding, etc
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Derived Formsadequacy (ˈædɪkwəsɪ), nounadequately, adverb

Word Origin

C17: from Latin adaequāre to equalize, from ad- to + aequus equal
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for adequately

adv.

1620s, from adequate + -ly (2); originally a term in logic in reference to correspondence of ideas and objects. Meaning "suitably" is recorded from 1680s.

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adequate

adj.

1610s, from Latin adaequatus "equalized," past participle of adaequare "to make equal to," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + aequare "make level," from aequus (see equal). The sense is of being "equal to what is required." Related: Adequateness.

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper