reservation

Travel and dining lean on this sense constantly, and it pairs naturally with book: you book, and then you hold a reservation, usually made in the name of whoever will arrive. Paul Bigland, writing in Rail in 2020, admits he has not booked and wonders what happens when reservations are compulsory and a passenger simply turns up.

An American term for land set apart for a Native American people. Reserve covers the same ground. Inside a proper name the word is capitalized, as in the Hopi Reservation. In casual speech it is often clipped to res or rez, with rezzy as a further informal variant. These short forms suit conversation rather than formal writing.

Hesitation is most at home in the plural: people have reservations about a plan, or some reservations about cosigning a loan. The singular appears mainly when counting, as in only one reservation or without a single reservation. The usual preposition is about, though with also occurs, as in a 1992 game review in Your Sinclair complaining of only one reservation with the game.

The root sense the specialized ones branch from: Middle French reservation, built from reserve plus -ation. It names the act, not the thing held back, and it usually takes of: the reservation of funds, the reservation of mineral rights. What is actually withheld is the thing kept back. The church uses, including the Eucharistic practice, apply this same act to particular goods.

This is British road language, nearly always in the fuller phrase central reservation: vehicles crash through it and barriers run along it. American English calls the same strip a median or median strip. Readers on either side should watch for the clash with the booking sense and the Native American lands, which are what an American hears in the bare word.

Indian public policy gives the word its own politics. It refers to a constitutionally mandated quota of seats in legislatures, public employment and educational institutions for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. Used this way it is usually uncountable and takes no article: reservation in higher education, or extending reservation to a newly recognized category.

Constitutional law keeps the verb working here: a governor or viceroy reserves a bill, holding it back from assent and sending it upward. Unlike an outright refusal, reservation does not kill the measure. It suspends the bill until the higher authority grants or denies approval. The power belongs to layered systems, where a state answers to a federal government or a colony to the crown.

Liturgy takes the general act of keeping back and gives it one precise purpose. After the service, part of the consecrated bread is set aside in a tabernacle or pyx so that communion can be carried later to the sick, the dying, or others who could not be present. The usual phrase is reservation of the sacrament, and it names a standing practice rather than a single act.

A term of medieval canon law, in which the pope does the keeping back. He holds for himself the right to fill a benefice, overriding the ordinary claim of a local patron or bishop. It usually appears as papal reservation. What is reserved is the appointment itself, not the church's property or income.