How is “indulge” different from “cater to”?
Why should my daughter’s father try and save her?
I know that he has always indulged her every whim.
Is it true that they are related or interchangeable? Do you still think that in everyday English one is more common than the other?
What would be consequences of that?
Cater To is neutral: it expresses no judgement about the appropriateness of the behaviour.
Indulge is not neutral: it implies that the demands are unreasonable, or that the person satisfying the demands is behaving unwisely.
‘Cater to’ may commonly be neutral and means “supply a desire, need or requirement”, e.g. the Acme Screw and Bolt Company caters to the needs of industrial clients for threaded fasteners but ‘indulge’ can have the pejorative implication that the receiver is greedy or demanding and the supplier is weak or easily persuaded to be self serving. My four year old niece enjoys eating ice cream so I took her to the zoo last week. She was happy. She says her teddy bear speak. She even claims that her teddy bear can speak, and has decided opinions about chocolate, and was happy to
indulge her in that belief.
