obligate

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

• (US) (verb): enPR: äbʹlĭ-gātˈ, IPA^(key): /ˈɑb.lɪˌɡeɪt/

(adjective): enPR: äbʹlĭ-gĭt, IPA^(key): /ˈɑb.lɪ.ɡɪt/

• (UK) (verb): enPR: ôbʹlĭ-gātˈ, IPA^(key): /ˈɒb.lɪˌɡeɪt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

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

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

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

1. (transitive, Canada, US, Scotland) To bind, compel, constrain, or oblige by a social, legal, or moral tie.
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.

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,[1] having disappeared from standard British English by the 20th century, being replaced by obliged (it was previously used in the 17th through 19th centuries).[2]

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

• obligation
• obligatory

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

• See Thesaurus:optional § Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:optional § Antonyms

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

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

obligate

1. present adverbial passive participle of obligi

• Audio

  (file)

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

obligāte

1. vocative masculine singular of obligātus

obligate

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