dispense

From Middle English, from Old French dispenser, from Latin dispēnsāre (“to weigh out, pay out, distribute, regulate, manage, control, dispense”), frequentative of dispendere (“to weigh out”), from dis- (“apart”) + pendere (“to weigh”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɪˈspɛns/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛns
• Hyphenation: dis‧pense

dispense (third-person singular simple present dispenses, present participle dispensing, simple past and past participle dispensed)

1. To issue, distribute, or give out.
   • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], OCLC 742335644:

     He is delighted to dispense a share of it to all the company.

   • 1955, William Golding, The Inheritors, Faber and Faber 2005, p.40:

     The smoky spray seemed to trap whatever light there was and to dispense it subtly.

2. To apply, as laws to particular cases; to administer; to execute; to manage; to direct.

   to dispense justice

   • 1662, John Dryden, To the Lord Chancellor Hyde

     While you dispense the laws, and guide the state.

3. To supply or make up a medicine or prescription.

   The pharmacist dispensed my tablets.

   An optician can dispense spectacles.

4. (obsolete) To give a dispensation to (someone); to excuse.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 34, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

     After his victories, he often gave them the reines to all licenciousnesse, for a while dispencing them from all rules of military discipline […].

   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 11, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, OCLC 1069526323:

     It was resolved that all members of the House who held commissions, should be dispensed from parliamentary attendance.

   • 1779–81, Samuel Johnson, "Richard Savage" in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poet

     He appeared to think himself born to be supported by others, and dispensed from all necessity of providing for himself.

5. (intransitive, obsolete) To compensate; to make up; to make amends.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, stanza 30:

     One loving howre / For many yeares of sorrow can dispence

   • c. 1386–1390, John Gower, Reinhold Pauli, editor, Confessio Amantis of John Gower: Edited and Collated with the Best Manuscripts, volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Bell and Daldy […], published 1857, OCLC 827099568:

     His synne was dispensed with golde, wherof it was compensed

• dispensary
• dispenser
• dispense with

dispense (countable and uncountable, plural dispenses)

1. (obsolete) Cost, expenditure.
2. (obsolete) The act of dispensing, dispensation.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:

     […] what euer in this worldly state / Is sweet, and pleasing vnto liuing sense, / Or that may dayntiest fantasie aggrate, / Was poured forth with plentifull dispence […]

• dispensable
• dispensation
• dispensative
• dispensatory

• dispend

• dispense in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• dispense in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
• dispense at OneLook Dictionary Search

• despines, piedness

Deverbal from dispenser.

• Rhymes: -ɑ̃s

dispense f (plural dispenses)

1. dispensation

dispense

1. inflection of dispenser:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• “dispense”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• pendisse

dispense f

1. plural of dispensa

dispense

1. third-person singular past historic of dispegnere

• pendessi

dispense

1. inflection of dispensar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

dispense

1. inflection of dispensar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative