benefacture

Borrowed from Latin benefactūrus, future active participle of benefaciō (“to do good, to benefit”) + -ure (noun-forming suffix).

benefacture (countable and uncountable, plural benefactures)

1. (obsolete) An act of doing good; benefaction, beneficence.

   Antonym: malefacture

   • 1651, Jos[eph] Hall, “Soliloq[uy] XXVIII: Univerſall Intereſt”, in Susurrium cum Deo. Soliloqvies: Or, Holy Self-Conferences of the Devout Soul , Second edition, London: Printed by Will[iam] Hunt, and are to be ſold by George Lathum junior, page 101:

     All theſe diſpoſitions are but incloſures; Give mee the open Champaine of a generall and illimited benefacture: Is he rich?

   • 1669, The Vulcano’s: Or, Burning and Fire-vomiting Mountains, Famous in the World: VVith their Remarkables, London: Printed by J. Darby, for John Allen;  , page 62; Collected for the moſt part out of [Athanasius] Kircher, Subterraneous World [Mundus Subterraneus], 1665:

     True it is he was full of pious and charitable good works and bublick Benefactures in his latter dayes.

   • 1776, , quoting a 1674 letter from Edmund Castell to John Spencer, “Additional Remarks”, in The Origin of Printing. In Two Essays , Second edition, Supplement to The Origin of Printing, London: Printed for W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, published 1781, page 294:

     Since, it is no ſmall greif to think, how this once apprized Gem is now depreciated; a diſcouragement to any ſuch kind of Benefacture.

   • 1879 January 4, “A Glance at the Winn Gallery in Woburn”, in Woburn Journal, volume 29, number 1, Woburn, Mass., page 2:

     A more sensible, well[-]intentioned benefacture could not have been devised, and it redounds all the more to the young man that in the will he considers himself to be only the almoner of his father, by whose business sagacity the handssome fortune was acquired.

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “benefacture”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.