endow

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English endowen, endouen, from Anglo-Norman endouer, en- + Old French douer (from Latin dōtāre (to endow), from dōs, dōtis (gift; dowry)).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɪnˈdaʊ/
  • Rhymes: -aʊ

Verb

endow (third-person singular simple present endows, present participle endowing, simple past and past participle endowed)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To provide with a dower
    • 1841, Charles Dickens, chapter 20, in Barnaby Rudge:
      Finding her quite incorrigible in this respect, Emma suffered her to depart; but not before she had confided to her that important and never-sufficiently-to-be-taken- care-of answer, and endowed her moreover with a pretty little bracelet as a keepsake.
  2. (transitive) To provide with money or other benefits, as a permanent fund for support
    • 1 January 2017, Norbert Haering in Global Research, A Well-Kept Open Secret: Washington Is Behind India’s Brutal Demonetization Project
      He already was a President of the American Finance Association and inaugural recipient of its Fisher-Black-Prize in financial research. He won the handsomely endowed prizes of Infosys for economic research and of Deutsche Bank for financial economics as well as the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Prize for best economics book.
  3. (transitive, followed by "with" or, rarely, by "of") To enrich or furnish with something as a gift, quality or faculty
    • 7 April 2016, Peter Bradshaw writing in The Guardian, Dheepan review – a crime drama packed with epiphanic grandeur
      It’s bulging with giant confidence and packed with outbursts of that mysterious epiphanic grandeur, like moments of sunlight breaking through cloud-cover, with which Audiard endows apparently normal sequences and everyday details.
    • 1891, James Jeffrey Roche, edited by Mary O'Reilly, Life of John Boyle O'Reilly
      Thus was he fitted to fulfill worthily the vocation of a poet. For it is not aimlessly that Divine Providence endows a human being with qualities so exceptional and exalted.
  4. (transitive, usually in passive) To be furnished with something naturally.
    She was endowed with a beautiful voice.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Anagrams

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.