different between allowance vs dispensation

English

Alternative forms

• allowaunce (obsolete)

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French alouance.

Morphologically allow +? -ance.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??la??ns/

Noun

allowance (countable and uncountable, plural allowances)

1. permission; granting, conceding, or admitting
2. Acknowledgment.
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.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

     Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave his brother a handsome allowance.

4. Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances
   • 1848, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II

     After making the largest allowance for fraud.

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

6. (horse racing) A permitted reduction in the weight that a racehorse must carry.

   Antonym: penalty

7. A child's allowance; pocket money.

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

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Crabbe to this entry?)

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

      this Allowance for their Transgressions

Synonyms

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

Derived terms

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).

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

English

Etymology

From Old French despensacion, from Latin dispens?ti?

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d?s?p?n?se???n/
• Rhymes: -e???n

Noun

dispensation (countable and uncountable, plural dispensations)

1. The act of dispensing or dealing out; distribution; often used of the distribution of good and evil by God to man, or more generically, of the acts and modes of his administration.
2. That which is dispensed, dealt out, or appointed; that which is enjoined or bestowed
3. A system of principles, promises, and rules ordained and administered; scheme; economy; as, the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations.
4. The relaxation of a law in a particular case; permission to do something forbidden, or to omit doing something enjoined; specifically, in the Roman Catholic Church, exemption from some ecclesiastical law or obligation to God which a man has incurred of his own free will (oaths, vows, etc.).

Related terms

• dispensationalism
• dispensationalist

Translations