allowance

• allowaunce (obsolete)

From Middle English allouance, from Old French alouance. Morphologically allow +‎ -ance.

• IPA^(key): /əˈlaʊəns/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: al‧low‧ance

allowance (countable and uncountable, plural allowances)

2. Permission; granting, conceding, or admitting.

   Synonyms: authorization, permission, sanction, tolerance; see also Thesaurus:permission

   • 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

     you sent a large commission to Gregory de Cassado, to conclude, without the King's will or the state's allowance

   • 1986, Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, Hazards in reuse of disposable dialysis devices: staff report to the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate‎^[1], U.S. Government Printing Office, page 272:

     [Mr. Michie] Q[uestion]. Didn't Dr. Carter, Director of the OHTA [Office of Health Technology Assessment], and Martin Erlichman, OHTA scientific analyst assigned to this assessment, express to you concerns about 60 days being unreasonable as far as timeframe was concerned for this assessment? [Mr. Marshall] A[nswer]. There was some discussion about that, but that occurred some time later when we made the decision to put a notice in the Federal Register. We—when we do an assessment, we put a notice in the Federal Register and then that requires the allowance of a certain amount of time for public comment.

   • 1991, Klaas van't Riet, Johannes Tramper, Basic Bioreactor Design‎^[2], CRC Press, →ISBN, page 286:

     The physical background of foaming of the complex fermentation liquids is not well understood. Proteins do play a major role, but all other components can also be important. Foaming is a problem, but its relation to mass transfer leads to the allowance of a certain amount of foam on top of the fermenter. For foam control a number of methods are available. Most widely used are the antifoam liquids and the centrifugal separator. The latter one should be equipped with a safety antifoam dosage device also and is less attractive for large-scale applications.

   • 1991 February 4, David Lafontaine, Patrick Ward, “Why Our Future Is In The GOP”, in Gay Community News‎^[3], volume 18, number 28, page 5:

     The colossal stupidity of the one-party strategy has had three disastrous effects: the nurturance of right-wing Republican homophobes, the weakening and silencing of pro-gay, progressive Republicans, and the allowance of lacklustrer^[sic], liberal Democrats to exploit us at their will and ignore us at their convenience.

4. Acknowledgment.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

     The censure of the which one must in your allowance overweigh a whole theater of others.

6. An amount, portion, or share that is allotted or granted; a sum granted as a reimbursement, a bounty, or as appropriate for any purpose.

   Synonym: stipend

   her meagre allowance of food or drink

   Being a volunteer is unpaid, but we get accommodation and a living allowance of 100 euros a week.

   1. Such a sum or portion granted to a family member or familiar, especially one's own child; pocket money for such a person.

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

      • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

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

8. Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances.

   to make allowance for his naivety

   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     After making the largest allowance for fraud.

10. (commerce) A deduction from the gross weight of goods, such as to discount their container's weight or per a custom differing by country.

    Hyponyms: tare, tret

    Minus the allowance, the total came to thirteen tons.

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

    Antonym: penalty

    On the Flat, an apprentice jockey starts with an allowance of 7 lb.

13. (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.

    Synonyms: remedy, tolerance

14. (obsolete) Approval; approbation.

    Synonyms: accedence, consent, sanction; see also Thesaurus:approval

    • 1807, George Crabbe, The Parish Register:

      […] gave allowance where he needed none

15. (obsolete) License; indulgence.
    • 1695, John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity:

      this Allowance for their Transgressions

17. (engineering) A planned deviation between an exact dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension.

• → Cebuano: alawans
• → Malay: élaun

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).

   The captain was obliged to allowance his crew.

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

   Our provisions were allowanced.

• “allowance”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.