DISPENSE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Dispense

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/dɪspˈɛns/ Listen

verb

Dispense v. t. (past & past part. dispensed; pres. part. dispensing)

1.

To deal out in portions; to distribute; to give; as, the steward dispenses provisions according directions; Nature dispenses her bounties; to dispense medicines. "He is delighted to dispense a share of it to all the company."

2.

To apply, as laws to particular cases; to administer; to execute; to manage; to direct. "While you dispense the laws, and guide the state."

3.

To pay for; to atone for. (Obs.) "His sin was dispensed With gold, whereof it was compensed."

4.

To exempt; to excuse; to absolve; with from. "It was resolved that all members of the House who held commissions, should be dispensed from parliamentary attendance." "He appeared to think himself born to be supported by others, and dispensed from all necessity of providing for himself."

Dispense v. i.

1.

To compensate; to make up; to make amends. (Obs.) "One loving hour For many years of sorrow can dispense."

2.

To give dispensation. "He (the pope) can also dispense in all matters of ecclesiastical law."

To dispense with.

(a)

To permit the neglect or omission of, as a form, a ceremony, an oath; to suspend the operation of, as a law; to give up, release, or do without, as services, attention, etc.; to forego; to part with.

(b)

To allow by dispensation; to excuse; to exempt; to grant dispensation to or for. (Obs.) "Conniving and dispensing with open and common adultery."

(c)

To break or go back from, as one's word. (Obs.)

noun

Dispense n. Dispensation; exemption. (Obs.)

Dispense n. Expense; profusion; outlay. (Obs.) "It was a vault built for great dispense."

See images of 'Dispense'

Etymology of 'Dispense'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Dispense" Quotes from Famous Books

... century ago the stories that are now told of the wonder-working electricity? For ages man had known the lightning, but only to fear it; now, this invisible current is generated by a man-made machine, imprisoned in a man-made wire and made to do the bidding of man. We are even able to dispense with the wire and hurl words through space, and the X-ray has enabled us to look through substances which were supposed, until recently, to exclude all light. The miracle is not more mysterious than ...

— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... a territory only a hundred li square it has been possible to obtain the Royal dignity. If your Majesty will indeed dispense a benevolent government to the people, being sparing in the use of punishments and fines, and making the taxes and levies of produce light, so causing that the fields shall be ploughed deep, and the weeding well attended to, and that the able-bodied, during ...

— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... under these circumstances his daily religious practices—those which no competitor for the meed of peace and the crown of glory can dispense with—were ...

— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... the body of citizens in a town were willing to serve. Gaal, son of Zobah, entered Shechem with troops raised by himself, just like a condottiere in Italy in the Middle Ages. As it became evident that the nation could not permanently dispense with an earthly government, it was forced to rally round some powerful leader; and as the Theocracy was still acknowledged by the best of the nation, these leaders, who owed their power to circumstances, could not easily be transformed into regular kings, but to exceptional ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... Walter Pater keeps as nearly to a method of that kind, I suppose, as fiction could. In Marius probably, if it is to be called a novel, the art of drama is renounced as thoroughly as it has ever occurred to a novelist to dispense with it. I scarcely think that Marius ever speaks or is spoken to audibly in the whole course of the book; such at least is the impression that it leaves. The scenes of the story reach the reader by refraction, as it were, through the medium of Pater's ...

— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

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