obligate

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin obligātus, past participle of obligō. Doublet of oblige, taken through French.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation)
  • (verb): enPR: ŏbʹlĭ-gāt', IPA^(key): /ˈɒb.lɪˌɡeɪt/

    • Audio (Southern England)

      (file)

  • (adjective): enPR: ŏbʹlĭ-gĭt, IPA^(key): /ˈɒb.lɪ.ɡɪt/

    • Audio (Southern England)

      (file)

• (General American)
  • (verb): enPR: ŏbʹlĭ-gāt', IPA^(key): /ˈɑb.lɪˌɡeɪt/
  • (adjective): enPR: ŏbʹlĭ-gĭt, IPA^(key): /ˈɑb.lɪ.ɡɪt/
• Hyphenation: ob‧li‧gate

Verb

obligate (third-person singular simple present obligates, present participle obligating, simple past and past participle obligated)

1. (transitive) To bind, compel, constrain, or oblige by a social, legal, or moral tie.
   • 2023 December 27, Richard Foster, “New rail freight terminal leads the way”, in RAIL, number 999, page 39:

     That progress has taken over ten years and £20 million to bring to fruition. But, as Mands explains, the journey has been one that HSG has been almost obligated to undertake. "First and foremost, this is an environmental project," she says.

2. (transitive, Canada, US, Scotland) To cause to be grateful or indebted; to oblige.
3. (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, having disappeared from standard British English by the 20th century, being replaced by obliged (it was previously used in the 17th through 19th centuries).

Synonyms

• (force, compel): See also: force: Synonyms

Derived terms

• obligation
• obligatory

Translations

to bind, compel, or constrain by a social, legal, or moral tie

• Bulgarian: задължавам (bg) (zadǎlžavam)
• Finnish: velvoittaa (fi)
• Greek: υποχρεώνω (el) (ypochreóno)
• Latin: obligō, teneo (la)
• Polish: zobowiązywać (pl) impf, zobowiązać (pl) pf
• Portuguese: obrigação (pt)

to cause to be grateful or indebted; to oblige

to commit (money, for example) in order to fulfill an obligation

• Portuguese: obrigação (pt)

Adjective

obligate (comparative more obligate, superlative most obligate)

1. (biology) Requiring a (specified) way of life, habitat, etc.. [from 19th c.]
   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: The First 100 Million Years, Penguin, published 2019, page 171:

     [A]nalysis of the chemical composition of their bones reveals that they were obligate carnivores.

2. 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

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:optional § Synonyms

Antonyms

• See Thesaurus:optional § Antonyms

Derived terms

• obligate carrier

Translations

Able to exist or survive only in a particular environment or by assuming a particular role

• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: obligat, tvungen, uten valgmulighet

• Russian: облига́тный (ru) m (obligátnyj)

Absolutely indispensable; essential

• Bulgarian: задължен (bg) (zadǎlžen), неотменен (bg) (neotmenen)
• Finnish: obligaatti, välttämätön (fi)
• Portuguese: exigido (pt) m, essencial (pt)

Related terms

• oblige
• obligee
• obliger
• obligor

 

References

• “obligate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “obligate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Esperanto

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /obliˈɡate/
• Hyphenation: o‧bli‧ga‧te
• Rhymes: -ate

Verb

obligate

1. present adverbial passive participle of obligi

German

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Adjective

obligate

1. inflection of obligat:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Latin

Participle

obligāte

1. vocative masculine singular of obligātus

Spanish

Verb

obligate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of obligar combined with te