different between benefaction vs indulgence

English

Etymology

From Latin benefacti?nem, from benefacere (“to benefit”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /b?n??fak?(?)n/

Noun

benefaction (countable and uncountable, plural benefactions)

1. An act of doing good; a benefit, a blessing.
   • 1999, Joyce Crick, translating Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Oxford 2008, p. 70:

     We all feel that sleep is a benefaction [transl. Wohlthat] to our psychical life, and the obscure awareness of the popular mind is clearly unwilling to be robbed of its prejudice that the dream is one of the ways in which sleep confers its benefactions.

2. An act of charity; almsgiving.

Translations

English

Etymology

From Middle French indulgence, or its source, Latin indulgentia.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n?d?ld???ns/
• Hyphenation: in?dul?gence

Noun

indulgence (countable and uncountable, plural indulgences)

1. the act of indulging
   • 1654, Henry Hammond, Of Fundamentals...

     will all they that either through indulgence to others or fondness to any sin in themselves, substitute for repentance any thing that is less than a sincere, uniform resolution of new obedience
2. tolerance
3. catering to someone's every desire
4. something in which someone indulges
5. An indulgent act; favour granted; gratification.
   • a. 1729, John Rogers, The Goodness of God a Motive to Repentance

     If all these gracious indulgences are without any effect on us, we must perish in our own folly.

6. (Roman Catholicism) A pardon or release from the expectation of punishment in purgatory, after the sinner has been granted absolution.
   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 555:

     To understand how indulgences were intended to work depends on linking together a number of assumptions about sin and the afterlife, each of which individually makes considerable sense.

Related terms

• indulge
• indulgent

Translations

Verb

indulgence (third-person singular simple present indulgences, present participle indulgencing, simple past and past participle indulgenced)

1. (transitive, Roman Catholic Church) to provide with an indulgence

French

Noun

indulgence f (plural indulgences)

1. leniency, clemency
2. (Roman Catholicism) indulgence