I heard one of these adjectives this morning and wondered why the speaker did not use the other.<\/p>\n
Question:<\/strong> Explanation:<\/strong> The adjective “proportionate” in her statement struck me as odd because I would have used the adjective “proportional” instead.<\/p>\n Both adjectives date back to late 1300s.<\/p>\n If you look up the definition of “proportionate”, then you will see that one of its definitions is proportional<\/em>.<\/p>\n In contrast, if you look up the definition of “proportional” in many dictionaries, then you will not see that one of its definitions is proportionate<\/em>, although “proportionate” is listed as a synonym of “proportional”.<\/p>\n One of the primary definitions of both adjectives is being in proportion<\/em>.<\/p>\n So these two adjectives essentially mean the same thing.<\/p>\n For fun, and because I was curious about which adjective was more popular on the Web, I searched Google for each of these adjectives and got about the indicated numbers of matches:<\/p>\n This tells me that Web authors have favored “proportional” over “proportionate” by a ratio of 7.81-to-1, which is consistent with my initial reaction to hearing “proportionate” in the HGTV program.<\/p>\n Answer:<\/strong> I heard one of these adjectives this morning and wondered why the speaker did not use the other. Question: Do these two adjectives mean the same thing? Explanation: I was watching “Landscapers’ Challenge” on the HGTV channel and heard a designer say something to the effect of “You need a pot that is proportionate to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives","category-versus"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nDo these two adjectives mean the same thing?<\/p>\n
\nI was watching “Landscapers’ Challenge” on the HGTV channel and heard a designer say something to the effect of “You need a pot that is proportionate to the size of the plant.”<\/p>\n\n
\nThe two adjectives mean essentially the same thing, but “proportional” seems to be much more popular than “proportionate”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"