endowment

Noun

endowment (countable and uncountable, plural endowments)

1. Something with which a person or thing is endowed.
   • I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world; that we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt; and that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and...1791, Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson on racism and slavery (19 August 1791)
   • Thus it was with Henrietta. She knew more of the world than most women of her years; for her converse had been chiefly with her uncle, a man of remarkable endowments: and she had read an infinite variety of book—read them, too, with that quick perception which seizes motive and meaning with...1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Age and Youth”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 8

   Synonyms:

   gift

2. Property or funds invested for the support and benefit of a person or not-for-profit institution.
   • Not content with the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling.1884, Edwin Abbott Abbott, in chapter 8 of his novella Flatland
   • I seem to see a great university, great in endowment, in land, in buildings, in equipment, but greater still, second to none, in its practical idealism, and its social usefulness.1932, Robert Clarkson Clothier, after assuming the presidency of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
3. Endowment assurance or pure endowment.
4. (Mormonism) A ceremony designed to prepare participants for their role in the afterlife.