# allowance
## English
### Alternative forms

* allowaunce (obsolete)

### Etymology

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

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /əˈlaʊəns/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Hyphenation: al‧low‧ance

### Noun

allowance (countable and uncountable, plural allowances)
* Permission; granting, conceding, or admitting
** 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
** 1991 February 4, David Lafontaine, Patrick Ward, “Why Our Future Is In The GOP”, in Gay Community News, 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, liberal Democrats to exploit us at their will and ignore us at their convenience.
* 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.
* An amount, portion, or share that is allotted or granted; a sum granted as a reimbursement, a bounty, or as appropriate for any purpose
    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.
** 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.
* 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.
* (commerce) A customary deduction from the gross weight of goods, differing by country.
    Tare and tret are examples of allowance.
* (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.
* A child's allowance; pocket money.
    She gives her daughters each an allowance of thirty dollars a month.
* (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.
* (obsolete) Approval; approbation.
** 1807, George Crabbe, The Parish Register:[…] gave allowance where he needed none
* (obsolete) License; indulgence.
** 1695, John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity:this Allowance for their Transgressions
* (engineering) A planned deviation between an exact dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension.

#### Synonyms

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

#### Derived terms

* attendance allowance
* cost-of-living disallowance
* depreciation allowance
* disallowance
* emission allowance
* family allowance
* field allowance
* Jobseeker's Allowance
* misallowance
* monkey's allowance
* personal allowance
* seam allowance
* separation allowance
* travel allowance

#### Descendants

* → Cebuano: alawans
* → Malay: élaun

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Verb

allowance (third-person singular simple present allowances, present participle allowancing, simple past and past participle allowanced)
* (transitive) To put upon a fixed allowance (especially of provisions and drink).
    The captain was obliged to allowance his crew.
* (transitive) To supply in a fixed and limited quantity.
    Our provisions were allowanced.

### References

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