dole out

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU):

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Verb

dole out (third-person singular simple present doles out, present participle doling out, simple past and past participle doled out)

1. (idiomatic, transitive) To distribute in small amounts.
   • 2009 January 25, Frank Rich, “No Time for Poetry”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     Only then did we learn that he doled out billions in secret, last-minute bonuses to his staff last month, just before Bank of America took over and just before the government ponied up a second bailout to cover Merrill’s unexpected $15 billion fourth-quarter loss.

   • 2012 May 27, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “New Kid On The Block” (season 4, episode 8; originally aired 11/12/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club‎^[2]:

     The animators, writers and Gilbert do a fantastic job of making Laura an eminently crush-worthy figure of adolescent yearning but the episode doles out scenes of her and Bart together sparingly.

Synonyms

• (distribute in small portions): dish out, mete out

Translations

to distribute in small quantities

• French: distribuer (fr)
• Italian: distribuire (it)
• Japanese: 分け与える (wake ataeru)
• Maori: tōronga
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Dutch: verdelen (nl), uitdelen (nl)
• Occitan: distribuir (oc)
• Serbo-Croatian: porcionirati