allowance
English
[edit]
Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English allouance, from Old French alouance.
Morphologically allow + -ance.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]allowance (countable and uncountable, plural allowances)
- Permission; granting, conceding, or admitting
- 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
- you sent a large commission to Gregory de Cassado, to conclude, without the King's will or the state's allowance
- 1991 February 4, David Lafontaine, Patrick Ward, “Why Our Future Is In The GOP”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 28, page 5:
- The colossal stupidity of the one-party strategy has had three disastrous effects: the nurturance of right-wing Republican homophobes, the weakening and silencing of pro-gay, progressive Republicans, and the allowance of lacklustrer, liberal Democrats to exploit us at their will and ignore us at their convenience.
- Acknowledgment.
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
- The censure of the which one must in your allowance overweigh a whole theater of others.
- An amount, portion, or share that is allotted or granted; a sum granted as a reimbursement, a bounty, or as appropriate for any purpose
- her meagre allowance of food or drink
- Being a volunteer is unpaid, but we get accommodation and a living allowance of 100 euros a week.
- 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
- Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave his brother a handsome allowance.
- Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances
- to make allowance for his naivety
- 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:
- After making the largest allowance for fraud.
- (commerce) A customary deduction from the gross weight of goods, differing by country.
- (horse racing) A permitted reduction in the weight that a racehorse must carry.
- Antonym: penalty
- On the Flat, an apprentice jockey starts with an allowance of 7 lb.
- A child's allowance; pocket money.
- She gives her daughters each an allowance of thirty dollars a month.
- (minting) A permissible deviation in the fineness and weight of coins, owing to the difficulty in securing exact conformity to the standard prescribed by law.
- (obsolete) Approval; approbation.
- 1807, George Crabbe, The Parish Register:
- […] gave allowance where he needed none
- (obsolete) License; indulgence.
- 1695, John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity:
- this Allowance for their Transgressions
- (engineering) A planned deviation between an exact dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension.
Synonyms
[edit]- (act of allowing): authorization, permission, sanction, tolerance.
- (money): stipend
- (minting): remedy, tolerance
Derived terms
[edit]Descendants
[edit]Translations
[edit]the act of allowing, granting, conceding, or admitting; authorization; permission; sanction; tolerance
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acknowledgment
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that which is allowed
abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances
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a customary deduction from the gross weight of goods
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a child's allowance; pocket money — see pocket money
a planned deviation between dimensions
an amount that is granted
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Verb
[edit]allowance (third-person singular simple present allowances, present participle allowancing, simple past and past participle allowanced)
- (transitive) To put upon a fixed allowance (especially of provisions and drink).
- The captain was obliged to allowance his crew.
- (transitive) To supply in a fixed and limited quantity.
- Our provisions were allowanced.
References
[edit]- “allowance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
Categories:
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English 3-syllable words
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- English lemmas
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- en:Horse racing
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- en:Money