Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adv. For the specific purpose, case, or situation at hand and for no other: a committee formed ad hoc to address the issue of salaries.
- adj. Formed for or concerned with one specific purpose: an ad hoc compensation committee.
- adj. Improvised and often impromptu: "On an ad hoc basis, Congress has . . . placed . . . ceilings on military aid to specific countries” ( New York Times).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. To this; with respect to this (subject or thing); in particular.
Wiktionary
- adj. For this particular purpose.
- adj. Special.
- adj. Created on the spur of the moment; impromptu.
- adv. On the spur of the moment.
- adv. For a particular purpose.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. for or concerned with one specific purpose
- adj. often improvised or impromptu
- adv. for one specific case
Etymologies
- From New Latin ad hoc ("for this"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin : ad, to + hoc, neuter accusative of hic, this. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Over the course of seven and a half years, Beheler, the ABC Board, and the ATF recorded what happened at the Exchange and slowly built real cases against the vast ad hoc network of liquor producers in Virginia and North Carolina.”
“Bizarrely, the Pentagon continued to employ Mylroie on an ad hoc basis up till 2007 despite the fact that all of her theories about Iraq had been comprehensively disproven years before.”
“The immediate concern for Merban was to determine whether Indonesia was pursuing a well-thought-out program to promote exports or a series of ad hoc measures that could never be implemented.”
Simon & Schuster: Strategic Management in Developing Countries Case Studies
“Here the Kennedy-Bundy ad hoc mode of operation generated a series of incremental decisions that coped with the present but piled up problems for the future.”
“Secretary of State Rusk, by contrast, was most uncomfortable with it, thinking it inappropriate for a person of his rank to argue policy in large meetings with staff aides, or to handle matters ad hoc with Kennedy or Bundy over the telephone.”
“Imperfections are inevitable when ‘back to the drawing board’ is not an option – when improvements can be achieved only by making ad hoc modifications to what is already there.”
“The more complex and deadly the attack, the more likely it was to be organized not by a group of ad hoc “self-starting” jihadists but by an organization with cadre trained in bomb making and other pertinent skills such as countersurveillance.”
“Within two weeks, a group of parents had organized a face-to-face meeting, and those ad hoc get-togethers eventually coalesced into a group that called itself Dissatisfied Parents Together—DPT for short.”
“Colonel House, Harry Hopkins, Andy Goodpastertheir roles were ad hoc responses to presidential needs.”
“As for Somalia, a steady deterioration in the political and military situation on the ground produced ad hoc tactical adjustments, including the dispatch of U.S. Army Rangers in August, rather than a serious strategic reevaluation.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ad hoc’.
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The Latin Doctor is Greek to me
Biology Students, Gladiators, Devil Dogs & Harry Potter
et tu, semper fidelis, carpe diem, cui bono, pons asinorum, limbus, e pluribus unum, sine qua non, quidnunc, lacus oblivionis, quincunx, experimentum crucis and 128 more...
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501
Classic
mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly and 401 more...
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501
Classic
abhor, mirth, obtuse, iota, vex, irk, teem, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane and 401 more...
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From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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501
Classic
bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august and 401 more...
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Gesundheit
Words that sound like sneezes
zucchini, zoology, wysiwyg, woodchuck, withhold, wichita, vacuum, twelfth, syzygy, synchronous, swatch, supersede and 120 more...
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Ends with C but not with "-ic"
bloc, roc, arc, orc, disc, sac, xebec, havoc, bivouac, sumac, maniac, insomniac and 418 more...
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SCIE - publications
The vocabulary of scientific paper submission
enclose, resource, meaningful, margin, embedded, publisher, mentor, clip, spelling, appendix, gloss, refer and 188 more...
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Latin
tempus fugit, ad absurdum, ad hominem, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, deus ex machina, in absentia, in loco parentis, in vino veritas, ipso facto, mea culpa, memento mori and 35 more...
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Pop Latin
Commonly used Latin expressions
viva voce, vide supre, vide, supra, stet, status quo, sine qua non, sine die, sic, quid pro quo, pro rata, pro bono and 24 more...
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Latin Words Used in English
Latin words, phrases, or abbreviations still used in modern English.
et cetera, ad hoc, post scriptum, id est, semper fidelis, semper paratus, veritas, vice versa, ergo, modus operandi, status quo, exempli gratia and 6 more...
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my GRE words
pedant, wizened, histrionic, logorrhea, frenetic, approbation, quibble, knell, acclivity, droog, prevarication, aplomb and 182 more...
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Personal Vocabulary List
All my favourite words that I come across!
veritable, incongruence, rigamorole, letcherous, revolting, repulsive, reputrid, rapatious, forays, guise, placate, paradigm and 1162 more...
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Vocabulary
Words I come across while reading.
talus, echelon, onanistic, cabochon, avocation, charnel, moue, portentous, prolixity, astringent, hoary, patina and 165 more...
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andystardust's Words
liminal, soporific, solipsism, calumny, sanguine, egregious, inimical, corpus, divulge, a fortiori, salutary, evanescence and 118 more...
Tweets
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