English

Alternative forms

• allowaunce (obsolete)

Noun

allowance ‎(plural allowances)

1. The act of allowing, granting, conceding, or admitting; authorization; permission; sanction; tolerance.
   • Without the king's will or the state's allowance. --William Shakespeare
2. Acknowledgment.
   • The censure of the which one must in your allowance overweigh a whole theater of others. --William Shakespeare
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, as of food or drink; hence, a limited quantity of meat and drink, when provisions fall short.
   • I can give the boy a handsome allowance. -- William Makepeace Thackeray.
4. Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances; as, to make allowance for the inexperience of youth.
   • After making the largest allowance for fraud. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay.
5. (commerce) A customary deduction from the gross weight of goods, different in different countries, such as tare and tret.
6. A child's allowance; pocket money.

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

7. (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.
8. (obsolete) approval; approbation

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

9. (obsolete) license; indulgence

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

Synonyms

• (money): stipend
• (minting): remedy, tolerance

Translations

Verb

allowance ‎(third-person singular simple present allowances, present participle allowancing, simple past and past participle allowanced)

1. To put upon a fixed allowance (especially of provisions and drink); to supply in a fixed and limited quantity.

   The captain was obliged to allowance his crew.

   Our provisions were allowanced.