allowance
Syllables: al·low·ance/əˈlaʊəns//əˈlaʊɪns/
allowance noun: permission; granting, conceding, or admitting.
Noun
allowance (countable and uncountable, plural allowances)
- Permission; granting, conceding, or admitting.
- you sent a large commission to Gregory de Cassado, to conclude, without the King's will or the state's allowance1613 (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)...
- [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....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, U.S. Government Printing...
- Synonyms:
- authorization, permission, sanction, tolerance, authority, clearance, consent, leave, license, mandate
- Acknowledgment.
- The censure of the which one must in your allowance overweigh a whole theater of others.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...
- 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.
- Synonyms:
- stipend
- 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.
- Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave his brother a handsome allowance.1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
- Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances.
- to make allowance for his naivety
- After making the largest allowance for fraud.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
- A deduction from the gross weight of goods, such as to discount their container's weight or per a custom differing by country.
- Minus the allowance, the total came to thirteen tons.
- A permitted reduction in the weight that a racehorse must carry.
- On the Flat, an apprentice jockey starts with an allowance of 7 lb.
- Antonyms:
- penalty
- A permissible deviation in the fineness and weight of coins, owing to the difficulty in securing exact conformity to the standard prescribed by law.
- Approval; approbation.
- […]gave allowance where he needed none1807, George Crabbe, The Parish Register
- Synonyms:
- accedence, consent, sanction, accession, approbation, approval, assent, assentment, authorization, OK
- License; indulgence.
- this Allowance for their Transgressions1695, John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity
- A sum of money allotted to a wife for her separate maintenance, especially alimony granted upon a legal separation or divorce.
- '[…] Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance […].1811, [Jane Austen], chapter IX, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume II, London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC
- A planned deviation between an exact dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension.
Verb
allowance (third-person singular simple present allowances, present participle allowancing, simple past and past participle allowanced)
- To put upon a fixed allowance (especially of provisions and drink).
- The captain was obliged to allowance his crew.
- To supply in a fixed and limited quantity.
- Our provisions were allowanced.
allowance meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
allowance in Hindi
- the act of allowing, granting, conceding, or admitting; authorization; permission; sanction; tolerance
- अनुज्ञा anujñā
allowance in Tamil
- படிக்காசு, படி, ஈடு, ஈடு தொகை, இசைவு, இணக்கம்
allowance in Marathi
- allowance, additional expense
- भत्ता bhattā
allowance in Urdu
- allowance, additional expense
- بھتہ bhatta
- allowance
- رزق rizq, خرچہ xarca, اذن izn
- allowance, pay, donation, gift
- بخش baxš
More languagesFewer languages
- allowance in Bengali
- ভাতা, বরাদ্দ
- allowance in Telugu
- అలవెన్సు alavensu
- allowance in Malayalam
- അനുമതി anumati
- allowance in Kannada
- ಪಡಿ, ಹಡದೆ, ಭತ್ಯ, ಮೊತ್ತ
- allowance in Punjabi
- ਭੱਤਾ bhattā
- allowance in Odia
- ଅନୁମତି anumati
- allowance in Malay
- elaun
- allowance in Indonesian
- tunjangan
- allowance in Thai
- อนุญาต à-nú-yâat, การอนุญาต kāan-à-nú-yâat
Examples of allowance in a sentence
- 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.1986, Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, Hazards in reuse of disposable dialysis devices: staff report to the Special...
- 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.1991, Klaas van't Riet, Johannes Tramper, Basic Bioreactor Design, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 286:
Synonyms of allowance
11 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of allowance
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | allowances |
| alternative form (obsolete) | allowaunce |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | allowances |
| present participle | allowancing |
| past participle | allowanced |
| past | allowanced |
Origin of allowance
From Middle English allouance, from Old French alouance. Morphologically allow + -ance.
Words formed from allowance
- 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
Phrases with allowance
Questions about allowance
- What does allowance mean?
- Allowance means permission; granting, conceding, or admitting.
- What is allowance in Hindi?
- Allowance in Hindi is अनुज्ञा (anujñā). See Allowance meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use allowance in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is allowance?
- Allowance can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce allowance?
- Allowance is pronounced /əˈlaʊəns/.
- What is the plural of allowance?
- The plural of allowance is allowances.
Words near allowance in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: allowance (page history and authors); allowance (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); भत्ता (Marathi) (page history and authors); اذن (Urdu) (page history and authors); allowance (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); అలవెన్సు (Telugu) (page history and authors); allowance (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਭੱਤਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-allowance.ogg.
Cite this entry: “allowance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/allowance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.