APPROPRIATE

From Latin appropriare — to make one’s own. The adjective and the verb share this root and diverged from it in opposite directions: what is proper to a situation versus what you make proper to yourself, regardless of whether it was yours to take.

The word that determines what belongs where is also the word for the act of deciding that something belongs to you. These two operations are not merely different — they are the core mechanism of power. Power is, among other things, the authority to determine what is appropriate and the capacity to appropriate what is not.

When a workplace tells an employee that their response was “not appropriate,” it is invoking the adjective: suitability, fit, correctness relative to a standard the workplace defines. When a researcher discovers that their findings have been appropriated by a senior colleague, the verb is invoked: taking, claiming, making one’s own without invitation.

The same root. The same letters. The same authority. The difference is only the stress — ap-PRO-priate for the adjective, ap-PRO-priate for the verb. In most accents, there is no difference at all. The word that tells you what is correct and the word for taking what is not yours sound, in speech, completely identical.

Who gets to define appropriate behavior and who gets to appropriate — these are the same question asked from different angles of the same power relation.