allocate
Formsallocates, allocating, allocated
Formsallocates, allocating, allocated
Pluralallocates
- 1To distribute something according to a plan, usually directing it to a particular person or purpose.
The board allocates revenue to regional offices according to a fixed formula.
Managers allocate budgets to teams at the start of each quarter.
Similardistribute, allot, assign, apportion
Note
The construction is the point here: what is shared out goes to someone, so the recipient follows to, as in funds allocated to school districts or revenue to regional offices. When the stress falls on purpose rather than recipient, for is the more natural choice, which is the pattern of the "set aside" sense: a meringue allocated for tomorrow's dinner party. Distribute alone says nothing of method; this verb adds that a plan decides each share.
- 2To set a portion of something aside, reserving it for a specific intended purpose.
The city allocated a large plot for the new park.
We allocate time each week to review the team's progress.
Similarassign, designate, earmark, dedicate, appropriate
Note
One Latin verb lies behind every sense of this word: ad- "to" joined to locō, a word that also reached English by another road as allow. Earmark and appropriate are close neighbors, and both stress that the share is held in reserve. Railway writing keeps a special use, in which an engine is allocated to a depot, as in Chris Gilson's line in RAIL (2024) about a locomotive "still allocated" at Cardiff Canton.
- 3In computing, to assign a block of memory to a program and reserve it for that program's use.
The function allocates memory for the array before filling it with data.
Programs must allocate enough memory to hold the entire dataset.
Similarreserve
Oppositefree, deallocate
Note
Programmers pair the verb with its undoing: memory that is allocated must later be freed, and free and deallocate are its working opposites. A memory manager allocates memory to requesting processes until none is left, so the to-construction of the general "distribute" meaning carries straight over into the technical sense.
Less common meanings
- 4Assigned or set apart for a purpose.
Note
A relic of older English, in which the Latin past participle allocātus was borrowed as allocate and did the work that modern English gives to allocated. It was applied to a pension or allowance. Anyone writing today should use allocated, because this form survives only as a historical curiosity and would read as a mistake in current prose.
- 5A writ that authorized a payment, allowance, or grant to be made.
The sheriff produced an allocate ordering the disbursement from the royal coffers.
Each allocate had to bear the official seal before payment was made.
Note
A writ named for its own first word: Middle English writs authorizing payment commonly opened with allocate, from Medieval Latin allocātum, and that opening word became the name of the document. It belongs to the history of English law and is now obsolete, so it turns up only in writing about how payments and allowances were once authorized. Unlike the verb, it takes a plural: allocates.
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Practice
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Origins
From Latin allocātus, the perfect passive participle of allocō, formed from ad- ("to") plus locō. It is a doublet of "allow."
From Middle English allocat(e) ("allocated"), originally used as the past participle of allocate, going back to Latin allocātus (see Etymology 1).
From Middle English allocate, the common first word of writs authorizing payment, from Medieval Latin allocātum, a noun form built from the neuter singular of allocātus. Alternatively, it comes from allocāte, the second-person plural imperative of allocō (compare English "liberate").