allowance

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English

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Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English allouance, from Old French alouance.

Morphologically allow +‎ -ance.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /əˈlaʊəns/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Hyphenation: al‧low‧ance

Noun

allowance (countable and uncountable, plural allowances)

  1. Permission; granting, conceding, or admitting.
    • 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, , “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
    • 1986, Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, Hazards in reuse of disposable dialysis devices: staff report to the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, U.S. Government Printing Office, page 272:
      Q. Didn't Dr. Carter, Director of the OHTA , and Martin Erlichman, OHTA scientific analyst assigned to this assessment, express to you concerns about 60 days being unreasonable as far as timeframe was concerned for this assessment? A. There was some discussion about that, but that occurred some time later when we made the decision to put a notice in the Federal Register. We—when we do an assessment, we put a notice in the Federal Register and then that requires the allowance of a certain amount of time for public comment.
    • 1991, Klaas van't Riet, Johannes Tramper, Basic Bioreactor Design, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 286:
      The physical background of foaming of the complex fermentation liquids is not well understood. Proteins do play a major role, but all other components can also be important. Foaming is a problem, but its relation to mass transfer leads to the allowance of a certain amount of foam on top of the fermenter. For foam control a number of methods are available. Most widely used are the antifoam liquids and the centrifugal separator. The latter one should be equipped with a safety antifoam dosage device also and is less attractive for large-scale applications.
    • 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.
  2. Acknowledgment.
  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.
    1. Such a sum or portion granted to a family member or familiar, especially one's own child; pocket money for such a person.
      She gives her daughters each an allowance of thirty dollars a month.
  4. Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances.
    to make allowance for his naivety
  5. (commerce) A deduction from the gross weight of goods, such as to discount their container's weight or per a custom differing by country.
    Hyponyms: tare, tret
    Minus the allowance, the total came to thirteen tons.
  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. (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.
  8. (obsolete) Approval; approbation.
    • 1807, George Crabbe, The Parish Register:
      gave allowance where he needed none
  9. (obsolete) License; indulgence.
    • 1695, John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity:
      this Allowance for their Transgressions
  10. (engineering) A planned deviation between an exact dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Descendants

  • Cebuano: alawans
  • Malay: élaun

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § 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