Meaning & use
provide
Last updated
Meanings
verbtransitive
To give or supply something that is needed or wanted.
Grammar: Two patterns: provide something for someone or provide someone with something.
Patterns
- provide something for someone
- provide someone with something
- provide something to someone
The hotel provides free breakfast for all guests.
The school provided every student with a laptop.
Volunteers provided food and blankets to the families.
verbintransitive
To earn enough money to support someone and meet their basic needs.
Grammar: Takes for: provide for your family.
Patterns
- provide for someone
He works two jobs to provide for his children.
She wanted to provide for her parents in their old age.
The fund will provide for widows and orphans.
verbintransitiveformal
To make arrangements to deal with something that might happen, or to state something in a rule or law.
Grammar: Formal; takes for or that: the law provides for appeals, the contract provides that fees are due.
Patterns
- provide for something
- provide that something
The contract provides for a refund within thirty days.
The law provides that every worker must receive a break.
The plan provides against sudden price rises.
Word forms
| third person singular | provides |
|---|---|
| past tense | provided |
| past participle | provided |
| -ing form | providing |
Common combinations
- provide information
- Please provide information about your previous jobs.
- provide a service
- The company provides a free delivery service.
- provide support
- Friends provided support during the difficult year.
- provide for a family
- He worked hard to provide for his family.
- provide evidence
- The police asked her to provide evidence.
- provide someone with
- The agency provides students with housing.
Synonyms and how they differ
- supply
- Supply often suggests a regular amount of goods, whereas provide is more general.
- give
- Give is simpler and more informal, and it lacks the sense of meeting a need that provide has.
- offer
- Offer means to make something available for someone to accept, but provide means actually giving it.
- furnish
- Furnish is more formal and often means supplying equipment or details.
Opposites
Word family
- provision noun
- the act of supplying, or an arrangement or condition in a law
- provider noun
- a person or company that supplies something
- provided conjunction
- on the condition that
- providing conjunction
- on the condition that
- provisional adjective
- arranged for now and likely to change
Commonly confused: provide or proved?
provide vs proved
Proved is the past form of prove, to show something is true. It looks like provided but means something quite different.
Practice
Choose the correct sentence.
Choose one answer.
When the person comes directly after provide, you need with before the thing given. The other versions use the wrong preposition or pattern.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “provide”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.