MEANING
1. To give someone or something a quality, ability, or characteristic.
2. To give money or property to support an institution, often through a lasting income-producing fund.
Use it for
describing a character’s distinctive capacity; giving an artificial being a human-like faculty; showing a place treated as having a personality; distinguishing an attributed quality from a literal physical giftDistinguishes being given a quality or capacity from being financed through a supporting fund. Writing functions: Characterization / Given capacities.
Words that belong together
- endowed with intelligence
- endow something with meaning
- endow a character with a trait
On the page
The inventor had endowed the machine with curiosity but not with any means of satisfying it.
Memory endowed the ruined house with a warmth no visitor could see.
Her bequest endowed a scholarship for students from the islands.
The family endowed the small hospital but retained no role in its daily management.
Word forms
- Base
- endow
- Past tense
- endowed
- Past participle
- endowed
- Present participle
- endowing
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- endow
- Present continuous
- am/is/are endowing
- Present perfect
- have/has endowed
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been endowing
- Past
- endowed
- Past continuous
- was/were endowing
- Past perfect
- had endowed
- Past perfect continuous
- had been endowing
- Future
- will endow
- Future continuous
- will be endowing
- Future perfect
- will have endowed
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been endowing
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Transitive verb: endow; endows; endowed; endowed; endowing. Future: will endow. A person or thing is endowed with a quality; an institution can be endowed with funds. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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