supposed to
(Redirected from be supposed to)
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]- (US) IPA(key): /səˈpoʊs(t) ˌtu/ (stressed)
Audio (US); “be supposed to”: (file) - (US) IPA(key): /səˈpoʊs tə/ (unstressed)
Adjective
[edit]supposed to (not comparable)
- (idiomatic, passive voice)[1][2] Expected to.
- Required to, obliged to, ought to.
- I am supposed to report to the police every week.
- Paul is supposed to call his mother every day.
- The phone is supposed to come with a manual.
- a. 1627 (date written), Francis Bacon, “A.D. 1612. Ætat. 52.”, in James Spedding, editor, The Works of Francis Bacon, […]: The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon […], volume IV, London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, published 1858, →OCLC, page 287:
- [I]t behoveth to peruse […] how much the king hath more now when the whole benefit is supposed to go to him, than he had when three parts of the benefit went to the committee.
- (in the negative) Permitted to.
- You are not supposed to smoke in the restaurant.[Note: this means, you are obliged not to smoke.]
- (in interrogative or similar situations) Able to, capable of (used to indicate that an expectation is impossible or unreasonable in the context).
- How am I supposed to work in all this racket?
- What was he supposed to do—just sit there and do nothing?
- Believed to; generally considered to; considered likely to.
- It's supposed to rain.
- The movie is supposed to be good.
- The thief is supposed to be hiding in the forest.
- 1848, J. S. Skinner & Son, editor, The Plough, The Loom and the Anvil[1], volume I, Philadelphia: J. S. Skinner & Son, page 137:
- The great use of coffee in France is supposed to have abated the prevalency of the gravel, for where coffee is used as a constant beverage, the gravel and the gout are scarcely known.
- Intended to.
- The phone is supposed to save us time.
- Required to, obliged to, ought to.
Usage notes
[edit]- Functions as a passive participial adjective, historically derived from the past participle of suppose, and behaves similarly to a passive/past participle in terms of grammar. Thus, it is typically preceded by a form of be, but not invariably so; see Citations:supposed to.
- Always followed by the infinitive form of a verb, if not omitted by ellipsis. Historically, the construction consisted of supposed followed by a to-infinitive.
- Often implies that the opposite is a strong possibility.
- When used with the sense "considered to" or "believed to", there is not always a clear distinction between this expression and the past participle of the ordinary verb suppose.
Synonyms
[edit]- (required): meant to (UK)
Translations
[edit]expected
Required to, obliged to
intended
See also
[edit]- asposed to (childish synonym)
References
[edit]- ^ Ward, Gregory, Birner, Betty, Huddleston, Rodney (2002) “Information packaging”, in Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, editors, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge University Press, page 1440
- ^ Palmer, Frank, Huddleston, Rodney, Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002) “Inflectional morphology and related matters”, in Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, editors, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge University Press, page 1618
Further reading
[edit]- “supposed to”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.