obligate
English
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin obligātus, past participle of obligō. Doublet of oblige, taken through French.
Pronunciation
- (US) (verb): enPR: äbʹlĭ-gātˈ, IPA(key): /ˈɑb.lɪˌɡeɪt/
- (adjective): enPR: äbʹlĭ-gĭt, IPA(key): /ˈɑb.lɪ.ɡɪt/
- (UK) (verb): enPR: ôbʹlĭ-gātˈ, IPA(key): /ˈɒb.lɪˌɡeɪt/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
- (adjective): enPR: ôbʹlĭ-gĭt, IPA(key): /ˈɒb.lɪ.ɡɪt/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
Verb
obligate (third-person singular simple present obligates, present participle obligating, simple past and past participle obligated)
- (transitive, Canada, US, Scotland) To bind, compel, constrain, or oblige by a social, legal, or moral tie.
- (transitive, Canada, US, Scotland) To cause to be grateful or indebted; to oblige.
- (transitive, Canada, US, Scotland) To commit (money, for example) in order to fulfill an obligation.
Usage notes
In non-legal usage, almost exclusively used in the passive, in form “obligated to X” where ‘X’ is a verb infinitive or noun phrase, as in “obligated to pay”. Further, it is now in standard use only in American English and some dialects such as Scottish,[1] having disappeared from standard British English by the 20th century, being replaced by obliged (it was previously used in the 17th through 19th centuries).[2]
Synonyms
- (force, compel): See also: force: Synonyms
Derived terms
- obligation
- obligatory
Translations
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Adjective
obligate (comparative more obligate, superlative most obligate)
- (biology) Requiring a (specified) way of life, habitat, etc.. [from 19th c.]
- 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: The First 100 Million Years, Penguin 2019, p. 171:
- [A]nalysis of the chemical composition of their bones reveals that they were obligate carnivores.
- 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: The First 100 Million Years, Penguin 2019, p. 171:
- Indispensable; essential; necessary; obligatory; mandatory; unavoidably invoked.
- In addition to being the obligate food source for monarch caterpillars, milkweeds also provide abundant nectar for the adult butterflies.
- In some languages such signaling is optional, whereas in others it is obligate.
- 2009, C. Kenneth Dodd Jr., Amphibian Ecology and Conservation: A Handbook of Techniques, page 304:
- Aquatic sites constitute obligate habitat for some species, and are critical breeding habitat for species with complex life cycles involving aquatic egg or larval development.
- 2012, Ulrich Sommer, Plankton Ecology: Succession in Plankton Communities, page 351:
- Unlike for phagotrophic flagellates, bacteria serve as a facultative rather than an obligate food source for crustacean zooplankton.
- 2013, K.C. Marshall, editor, Advances in Microbial Ecology, volume 11, page 472:
- Light is the obligate energy source for the phototrophic microbes constructing these benthic mats
Antonyms
- facultative
- optional
Translations
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Related terms
- oblige
- obligee
- obliger
- obligor
References
- obligate at OneLook Dictionary Search
- obligate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
- Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, p. 675
- The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1996)
Esperanto
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /obliˈɡate/
- Hyphenation: o‧bli‧ga‧te
- Rhymes: -ate
Verb
obligate
- present adverbial passive participle of obligi
German
Pronunciation
Audio (file)
Adjective
obligate
- inflection of obligat:
- strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
- strong nominative/accusative plural
- weak nominative all-gender singular
- weak accusative feminine/neuter singular
Latin
Participle
obligāte
- vocative masculine singular of obligātus