allowance

English

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• allowaunce

Etymology

Old French alouance.

Pronunciation

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• IPA: /əˈlaʊəns/, X-SAMPA: /@"laU@ns/

Noun

allowance (plural allowances)

1. The act of allowing, granting, conceding, or admitting; authorization; permission; sanction; tolerance.
   • Without the king's will or the state's allowance. --William Shakespeare
2. Acknowledgment.
   • The censure of the which one must in your allowance overweigh a whole theater of others. --William Shakespeare
3. That which is allowed; a share or portion allotted or granted; a sum granted as a reimbursement, a bounty, or as appropriate for any purpose; a stated quantity, as of food or drink; hence, a limited quantity of meat and drink, when provisions fall short.
   • I can give the boy a handsome allowance. -- William Makepeace Thackeray.
4. Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances; as, to make allowance for the inexperience of youth.
   • After making the largest allowance for fraud. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay.
5. (commerce) A customary deduction from the gross weight of goods, different in different countries, such as tare and tret.
6. A child's allowance; pocket money.

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

Synonyms

• (money): stipend

Translations

the act of allowing, granting, conceding, or admitting; authorization; permission; sanction; tolerance

• Bulgarian: разрешение (bg) (razrešenie), позволение (bg) (pozvolenie), допускане (bg) (dopuskane)
• Finnish: salliminen (fi)
• German: Erlaubnis (de) f

• Oriya: ଅନୁମତି (or)
• Scottish Gaelic: cuibhreann (gd) m
• Swedish: tillåtelse (sv)

acknowledgment

• Bulgarian: признаване (bg) (priznavane)

• Scottish Gaelic: cuibhreann (gd) m

that which is allowed

• Finnish: määräraha (fi), päiväraha (fi), annos (fi)

• Japanese: 給与 (ja) (kyūyo), こずかい (ja) (kozukai)

abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances

• Bulgarian: отстъпка (bg) (otstǎpka), вземане предвид (bg) (vzemane predvid)
• Finnish: varaus (fi)

• Scottish Gaelic: cuibhreann (gd) m

a customary deduction from the gross weight of goods

• Bulgarian: отстъпка (bg) (otstǎpka)
• Dutch: toestemming (nl)
• French: pension alimentaire (fr) m

• Irish: airgead póca m
• Polish: kieszonkowe (pl) n

a child's allowance; pocket money — see pocket money

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.

Verb

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

1. To put upon a fixed allowance (especially of provisions and drink); to supply in a fixed and limited quantity.

   The captain was obliged to allowance his crew.

   Our provisions were allowanced.