commensurate

What it means

1. Of a proportionate or similar measurable standard.

   commensurate punishments

   5 more examples

   The rewards will be commensurate with the efforts made.

   If it is essential in our interests to maintain a quasi-permanent position of power on the Asian mainland as against the Chinese then we must be prepared to continue to pay the present cost in Vietnam indefinitely and to meet any escalation on the other side with at least a commensurate escalation of commitment of our own.

   1962, Senator Mike Mansfield, Report to the President on Southeast Asia-Vietnam

   The $100 settlement was hardly commensurate with the humiliation his client had experienced.

   1981 February 7, David Morris, “Gay Man Wins Suit Against Police”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 28, page 4

   Kettering will become an important interchange for passengers making these journeys, and EMR is considering improvements to the station's facilities commensurate with this status.

   2019 October, Tony Miles, Philip Sherratt, “EMR kicks off new era”, in Modern Railways, page 54

   Mr. Katzenberg is now taking his commensurate lumps, particularly because contributors feel he helped disabuse donors’ concerns about Mr. Biden’s physical state.

   2024 July 11, Theodore Schleifer, Jacob Bernstein, Reid J. Epstein, “How Biden Lost George Clooney and Hollywood”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: commensurable, allowable, appropriate, apropos, apposite, apt, comely, correct · Antonyms: incommensurate, discommensurate, dissimilar, bad, discommensurate, improper, inappropriate, malapropos

2. natural sciencesDescribing a crystal in which every atom or molecule is placed in the same relative position
3. mathematicsDescribing two numbers within the same Archimedean class, so that neither is infinitely larger than the other.

   Crucially, every positive surreal number is commensurate with exactly one ω-power, in the following sense.

   2013, Aaron N. Siegel, Combinatorial Game Theory, →ISBN, page 424

In a sentence

commensurate punishments

Where it comes from

1. Latinmēnsūra“measure”
2. Late Latincommēnsūrātus
3. Englishcommensurate

First attested in 1641; borrowed from Late Latin commēnsūrātus, from com- (“together, with”) + mēnsūrātus, perfect passive participle of mēnsūrō (“to measure, to estimate”), (see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from Latin mēnsūra (“measure”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix).