compensate
Formscompensates, compensating, compensated
- 1To give someone money or another reward in return for their work or for something else they have provided.
The firm agreed to compensate employees for unused vacation days.
Volunteers were compensated with meal vouchers rather than cash.
Similarpay, reimburse, reward, remunerate, recompense
- 2To make up for something, or to offset and balance one thing against another so that things become even.
Higher wages can compensate for the long commute.
Extra rest on the weekend rarely compensates for sleep lost during the week.
Similaroffset, counterbalance, balance, counteract
Note
Here the Latin image is closest to the surface: compensō meant to weigh one thing against another, and this sense still pictures a pair of scales brought level. It works with or without for. Current English mostly says compensate for (a loud voice cannot compensate for a lack of personality), but the bare transitive appears in older prose: Francis Bacon in 1627 writes that the night's dews "compensate the heat of the day."
- 3To adjust or adapt to a change, especially a harm or loss.
Drivers compensate for poor visibility by slowing down and increasing their following distance.
When one kidney fails, the other often compensates by working harder.
Note
The sense of continual correction, which is why it sits so easily in the progressive: a driver whose old car pulls left is "forever compensating for that." What follows for is the problem, not a debt, and nobody is repaid. Instead the subject changes its own behavior, as someone with a broken leg takes to crutches. That separates it from paying someone and from balancing the scales.
- 4To do something good in response to something bad that has happened, making up for it.
She worked overtime to compensate for the days she had missed.
The airline gave each passenger a voucher to compensate for the long delay.
Similaratone
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Latin compēnsātus, the perfect passive participle of compensō ("to weigh one thing against another, to balance, to make good"), with the verb-forming suffix -ate.