provide
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /pɹəˈvaɪd/
Verb

provide (provides, present participle providing; past and past participle provided)

  1. To make a living; earn money for necessities.
    It is difficult to provide for my family working on minimum wage.
  2. To act to prepare for something.
    Provide against disaster.
  3. To establish as a previous condition; to stipulate.
    The contract provides that the work be well done.
    I'll lend you the money, provided that you pay it back by Monday.
  4. To give what is needed or desired, especially basic needs.
    Don't bother bringing equipment, as we will provide it.
    We aim to provide the local community with more green spaces.
  5. To furnish (with), cause to be present.
    • Rome […] was well provided with corn.
  6. To make possible or attainable.
    He provides us with an alternative option.
    • 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], H[enry] Lawes, editor, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: Printed [by Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, OCLC 228715864 ↗; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, OCLC 1113942837 ↗:
      Bring me berries, or such cooling fruit / As the kind, hospitable woods provide.
  7. (obsolete, Latinism) To foresee.
  8. To appoint to an ecclesiastical benefice before it is vacant. See provisor.
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