Adequates

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To be sufficient or acceptable for a particular purpose or requirement; to meet the necessary standards or levels needed; to furnish what is needed or expected
2. To fulfill the demands or criteria set by a situation or task; to provide what is necessary or enough; to serve as an appropriate or satisfactory match to needs
3. To satisfy the conditions or expectations in a given context; to supply the required amount or quality; to correspond adequately to the intended function or use

Etymology: "Adequates" is the third-person singular present form of "adequate," so its story is the story of the verb. That verb descends from a Latin verb meaning "to make equal to": "adaequare," built from "ad" ("to, towards") and "aequare" ("to make equal"), which itself comes from "aequus," "equal." The core idea is therefore a matching or levelling: something brought up to the same level as what it must meet. English took the word through a learned route, borrowing the Latin past participle "adaequatus" as the adjective "adequate," a pattern common in scholarly vocabulary. The verb "adequate" followed from that adjective, and its sense of satisfying a requirement grew naturally from the older idea of being equal to a demand. The French "adéquat" shares the same Latin source, so the two languages preserved the word in parallel.

Synonyms: suffices, meets requirements

Antonyms: inadequates, fails