Wiktionary

supposed to

English

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Pronunciation

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  • (US) IPA(key): /səˈpoʊs(t) ˌtu/ (stressed)
  • Audio (US); “be supposed to”:(file)
  • (US) IPA(key): /səˈpoʊs tə/ (unstressed)

Adjective

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supposed to (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic, passive voice)[1][2] Expected to.
    1. 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.
    2. (in the negative) Permitted to.
      You are not supposed to smoke in the restaurant.
      [Note: this means, you are obliged not to smoke.]
    3. (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?
    4. 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.
    5. Intended to.
      The phone is supposed to save us time.

Usage notes

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  • 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

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Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ 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
  2. ^ 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

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Note 4