MEANING
1. Special permission to do something normally prohibited or to avoid an ordinary rule or obligation.
2. A political or religious system governing a society during a particular period.
3. The giving out of something, or the share provided through that distribution.
Use it for
identifying an exception authorized by an institution; distinguishing permission from a general change in the rules; describing relief from a usual obligationSeparates an exemption from a rule, a governing order, and the distribution of something. Academic functions: Theory / Conceptual Language, Significance / Scope.
Words that belong together
- special dispensation
- grant a dispensation
- dispensation from a rule
On the page
The university granted a dispensation from the usual deadline after the applicant documented exceptional circumstances.
The historian asks whether the exemption was a personal dispensation or a precedent available to others.
The new dispensation altered formal authority while leaving several administrative practices intact.
The account compares taxation under two political dispensations rather than attributing every difference to individual rulers.
The archival account records the dispensation of grain during the shortage.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- dispensation
Usage notes
Noun: dispensation, dispensations. Permission may be countable or uncountable; a governing system is countable. Distribution use may denote the act or an allotted share. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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