allowance

English

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allowance

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• allowaunce (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English allouance, from Old French alouance.

Morphologically allow +‎ -ance.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈlaʊəns/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

allowance (countable and uncountable, plural allowances)

1. 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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     you sent a large commission to Gregory de Cassado, to conclude, without the King's will or the state's allowance

2. 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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     The censure of the which one must in your allowance overweigh a whole theater of others.

3. 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.

4. 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, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     After making the largest allowance for fraud.

5. (commerce) A customary deduction from the gross weight of goods, differing by country.

   Tare and tret are examples of allowance.

6. (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.

7. A child's allowance; pocket money.

   She gives her daughters each an allowance of thirty dollars a month.

8. (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.
9. (obsolete) Approval; approbation.
   • 1807, George Crabbe, The Parish Register:

     […] gave allowance where he needed none

10. (obsolete) License; indulgence.
    • 1695, John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity:

      this Allowance for their Transgressions

11. (engineering) A planned deviation between an exact dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension.

Synonyms

• (act of allowing): authorization, permission, sanction, tolerance.
• (money): stipend
• (minting): remedy, tolerance

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Cebuano: alawans
• → Malay: élaun

Translations

Verb

allowance (third-person singular simple present allowances, present participle allowancing, simple past and past participle allowanced)

1. (transitive) To put upon a fixed allowance (especially of provisions and drink).

   The captain was obliged to allowance his crew.

2. (transitive) To supply in a fixed and limited quantity.

   Our provisions were allowanced.

References

• “allowance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.