Literary notes about Adequate (AI summary)
The term “adequate” in literature broadly functions as a measure of sufficiency or proper fit, serving to indicate when something meets a certain standard without necessarily exceeding it. Philosophical works, for instance, deploy the word to classify ideas or knowledge as sufficiently clear or true—Spinoza’s writings ([1], [2], [3]) and Kant’s discussions ([4], [5], [6]) illustrate its use in distinguishing complete, reliable conceptions from those that are less exact. In historical and sociological narratives, “adequate” often qualifies measures, forces, or explanations, revealing whether a particular amount of power or a given description effectively corresponds to its objective ([7], [8], [9]). Even in literary criticism and descriptive passages, the term is used to emphasize that a certain level of expression or protection is achieved, such as in deliberations of beauty, language, or institutional performance ([10], [11], [12]). Thus, across diverse contexts, “adequate” consistently functions as a critical benchmark against which sufficiency, competence, or the completeness of an idea, method, or phenomenon is measured.
- Proof.—The essence of the mind is constituted by adequate and inadequate ideas (III. iii.), therefore (III.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza - He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza - Every idea, which in us is absolute or adequate and perfect, is true.
— from Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza - If we consider merely their extension, and whether they are adequate with ideas, the series of conditions may be regarded as all homogeneous.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - But the idea of it lies in the reason—be it possible or impossible to connect with the idea adequate empirical conceptions.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - No possible experience can present us with an object adequate to them in extent.
— from The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant - It was not till 1781 that the French Court felt able to direct upon the East naval forces adequate to the importance of the issue.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. Mahan - His army consisted of ninety or a hundred thousand men: a formidable power, if their fidelity and discipline had been adequate to their numbers.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Imagine the frightful mass of stuff disgorged as each successive vessel arrived, with no adequate means of taking it inland!
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - " The terms were hardly adequate; she might have spoken in that way of a tea-party at the dear old Miss Lannings'.
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - But no description can convey an adequate notion of the beauty and diversity in form and colour of this class of insects in the neighbourhood of Ega.
— from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll - She was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives.
— from Emma by Jane Austen
