inadequate
Not enough; not good enough in quality or quantity for a particular purpose.
writing-task-2readingspeakingHealthEducationGovernment and society
IELTS use
Criticising insufficient resources/steps in Task 2; describing problems in Reading and Speaking.
Examples
- Inadequate funding for mental health services has worsened the crisis.
- Many rural schools suffer from inadequate access to the internet.
Collocations
- inadequate funding
- Inadequate funding for public transport leads to overcrowding and delays.
Word family
- Noun
- inadequacy
- Adjective
- inadequate
- Adverb
- inadequately
Paraphrases
- insufficient: More formal, used for quantities.
- not up to standard: Focuses on quality, common in speaking.
Common mistakes
- inadequate of resources to inadequate resources. 'Inadequate' is an adjective, so it directly modifies the noun.
- It is inadequate to do to It is inadequate for doing/to do. Use preposition 'for' or infinitive sometimes, but check context.