pension
Pluralpensions
Verbpensions, pensioning, pensioned
Pluralpensions
Formspensions, pensioning, pensioned
- 1A regular payment made to a retired worker, soldier, or similar person in return for past service, provided by a government or a private fund.
After forty years at the factory, he finally began drawing his pension.
The company's pension fund lost a great deal of value during the downturn.
Similarsuperannuation
Note
Behind the retirement check is a very old idea of payment: Latin pēnsiō meant "payment, rent, compensation" and comes from pendō, "to weigh." In finance it is an annuity, earned by service already given rather than work being done now. That separates it from a wage. People draw a pension or depend on one, and the scheme or fund that pays it takes the word as a modifier.
- 2To grant a regular retirement payment to someone, often in recognition of their service.
The government decided to pension all veterans of the war.
The trustees pensioned their longest-serving employees with full benefits.
- 3To compel someone to retire by placing them on a pension.
The ministry chose to pension the outspoken general against his will.
Management pensioned the older clerks to bring in new staff.
Similarretire
Note
The same verb, with a sharper edge. To grant a pension is a reward, while to pension someone in this sense is to push them out of their post, with the pension as the means. Both take a direct object and share the forms pensioned and pensioning. Context alone decides whether the person was honored or removed, so make the compulsion explicit if it matters.
- 4USpah-SYOHN/pɑ̃ˈsjɔ̃/UKPAH-syohn/ˈpɒ̃sjɒ̃/A boarding house or small hotel, especially in continental Europe, that typically provides lodging along with certain meals and services.
They booked a family-run pension in the Alps for a week.
Each pension along the coast offered half-board at a fixed nightly rate.
Similarguesthouse, inn
Note
A second borrowing of the same Latin word, this time arriving whole from modern French. It is the European small hotel, and pensione is its doublet. John Irving's The World According to Garp (1978) defines it against the hotel: always smaller, never elegant, and only sometimes serving breakfast. The modest scale is the point, so the word suits family-run lodgings, not grand establishments.
- 5A regular payment made to support a royal favorite, or given by a patron to an artist or scholar.
The court painter relied on a generous pension from his royal patron.
Parliament grumbled about the pensions handed out to the king's favorites.
Similarallowance, stipend, annuity
Note
Patronage rather than retirement: this allowance depended on a ruler's or patron's favor, not on years of service. That is the difference from the modern retirement pension. Today it is a historical term. Use it when writing about courts, favorites and patronized artists of the past. When old political writing grumbles about pensions, this is usually the kind it means.
- 6A sum paid to a member of the clergy in place of tithes.
The rector received a modest pension in lieu of the tithes formerly collected.
Disputes over the pension owed to the curate dragged on for years.
Similarstipend
Less common meanings
- 7A wage or fee paid for work or services.
Note
The broadest meaning, and the closest to the Latin behind it: pēnsiō was any payment, rent or compensation, from pendō, "to weigh". Here a pension is simply what someone is paid for work done, with no hint of retirement. The sense is obsolete, so a modern writer should not use it. A reader who meets it in older English should take it as plain wages, not as the retirement income.
- 8A charge or expense of some kind, including a tax.
Note
Here the money runs the other way: a pension in this obsolete sense was something you paid, not something you received. That fits the Latin source, which covered rent as well as payment. A modern reader meeting a pension "laid on" goods or people in an old text should read it as a levy or charge, not an allowance.
- 9USpah-SYOHN/pɑ̃ˈsjɔ̃/UKPAH-syohn/ˈpɒ̃sjɒ̃/A boarding school in France, Belgium, Switzerland, or similar countries.
Note
The French loan once covered schooling as well as lodging: a pupil boarded at a pension in the same way a traveler stayed at one, so the idea of paid room and board carries over from the boarding-house meaning. In English this school sense is now obsolete. It surfaces in older accounts of education in France, Belgium or Switzerland.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English pencioun, from Anglo-Norman pencione and Old French pencion, and ultimately from Latin pēnsiō ("payment, weight, rent, compensation"), which comes from the participle stem of pendō ("to weigh").
From French pension, from Old French pencion, as in the first etymology above. It is a doublet of pensione.