to misappropriate
5
8.4
- verb
- /ˌmɪsəˈproʊpriˌeɪt/
- Formal
:
malversar
- The accountant was found to have misappropriated large sums of money from the company's accounts.
- misappropriated client funds
- misappropriating the money
Examples
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You may have had the funds to keep this going, and they've been misappropriated.
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In the end, the trustees repeatedly misappropriated Six Nations funds, often for their own personal benefit (or that of friends and family).
Academic text (2009) -
You say money is getting tight, but yet you continue to to misappropriate funds.
-
Can you show that the school has misappropriated public money?
Blog text (23) -
One president demonstrated this ability when he was accused by the faculty senate of misappropriating college funds.
Academic text (1991) -
The funds Pauly misappropriated are beginning to nettle me.
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Early reports show that records seized indicate Mr. Dunlap misappropriated... ...millions of dollars of his company's funds... ... to finance a gambling addiction.
-
Two ministries alone are alleged to have misappropriated 234 million Kenyan shillings.
Academic text (1992) -
In 2003, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported the results of a study showing that officers and directors had misappropriated more than $1 billion from more than 150 nonprofit organizations.
Academic text (2007) -
For more than two decades, Madoff solicited billions of dollars from investors under false pretenses, failed to invest such funds as promised, and misappropriated and converted investors' funds for his own benefit and the benefit of others.
Academic text (2017)
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Take something that does not belong to you without permission
28
8.1
To steal money or things that you were trusted with and use them yourself illegally
7
6.6
To take someone else's ideas or work and use them as your own without permission
To steal money that was given to you to look after
To steal money or property that someone trusted you to keep
To take money that people trust you to keep and use it for yourself
Antonyms
How Dishonest
Surface Forms
Morphology
misappropriate = appropriate (semi-transparent) = mis + appropriate
The verb is formed by adding the prefix 'mis-' (wrongly/incorrectly) to the verb 'appropriate', but many learners know 'appropriate' chiefly as an adjective meaning 'suitable', which can cause confusion about the meaning.
Etymology
Misappropriate comes from mis- meaning 'wrong' plus appropriate, which comes from a root meaning 'one's own' and appears in words like proper and property. So to misappropriate something is to take it for yourself in the wrong way when it was given to you to look after.