tolerance
Pluraltolerances (some meanings)
Verbtolerances, tolerancing, toleranced
Pluraltolerances (some meanings)
Formstolerances, tolerancing, toleranced
- 1Acceptance of or patience with the beliefs, opinions, or practices of others; a lack of bigotry.
The community prided itself on its tolerance toward newcomers of every faith.
Genuine tolerance means listening to views you strongly disagree with.
Similaracceptance, open-mindedness, broad-mindedness, forbearance
Oppositeintolerance, bigotry, prejudice
Note
Here the old endurance turns outward. What is borne is now other people's beliefs and ways, a shift the Latin root behind the obsolete "endurance" sense already hints at. The people or practices being borne follow toward: Dmitry Shumsky writes in 2019 of the Ottoman Empire's tolerance toward ethnic minorities. The noun is uncountable here, and its plain opposite is bigotry.
- 2The ability of the body to resist a poison, cope with a dangerous drug, or survive infection by an organism.
Repeated use of the painkiller increased her tolerance, so larger doses were needed.
Native populations often show a higher tolerance for local diseases.
Similarresistance, immunity
Oppositesusceptibility, sensitivity
- 3How far something varies or is allowed to vary from a standard, especially the greatest permissible difference from a specified measurement in engineering.
Engineers specified a tolerance of plus or minus two microns for the bearing.
Looser tolerances kept production costs down without hurting performance.
Note
An engineer's word, and a countable one. A tolerance is a stated amount, so parts have tolerances, and one tolerance can be ten times another. The larger the figure, the more a part may deviate from the standard and still pass. This is the noun that the engineering verb is built on.
- 4In medicine, the body's capacity to receive grafted or transplanted tissue without its immune system rejecting it.
Achieving immune tolerance remains the central goal of transplant medicine.
The patient's tolerance to the donor heart let doctors lower her medication.
Oppositerejection
Note
In transplantation the body's tolerance runs the other way from resisting poisons and infections. Instead of withstanding something harmful, the body declines to fight something foreign. Transplant medicine calls this state immune tolerance: grafted tissue stays in place because the body does not reject it.
- 5To design or engineer a material or component to meet a specified allowable variation.
Machinists tolerance the bore to within a few microns of the design spec.
Designers must tolerance critical surfaces carefully to ensure proper assembly.
Note
A verb made directly from the engineering noun, not from tolerate. It inflects as tolerances, tolerancing and toleranced. A part is toleranced to a figure, while a nuisance is tolerated. The two past forms look alike but belong to different words, and the spelling tells the reader which meaning is in play.
Less common meaning
- 6The capacity to endure pain or hardship; physical or mental endurance.
Note
The oldest meaning, and the closest to the Latin: tolerantia meant "endurance," from tolerō, "endure." In this sense, tolerance is what lets someone bear pain or hardship, not other people's views. Because the sense is obsolete, a modern reader will hear the "acceptance" meaning instead. In present-day writing, endurance or fortitude says this without confusion.
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Practice
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Origin
This word came into English through Middle French tolerance, from Latin tolerantia ("endurance"), which comes from tolerans, the present participle of the Latin verb tolerō ("to endure").