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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
dispense
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
dispensing chemist
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
advice
▪ Their function was to advise the monarch and if he chose to dispense with their advice, so be it.
▪ The escorts handle all logistic details and also dispense advice on matters of protocol and decorum.
▪ Depending on your boss's nature, you can either dispense advice or yield.
justice
▪ We could dispense some justice and hang him from the bowsprit to save the courts the trouble.
▪ Here rappers become vigilantes or revolutionaries: machines for dispensing rough justice or revenge.
▪ A new international law made it a duty to dispense justice to victims, whatever reason of state might be invoked.
▪ Who dispenses justice round here? 18.
need
▪ Such legalisation would not magically dispense with the need for policemen, but it would make the needed policing more manageable.
▪ Later tunnels were built with towpaths which dispensed with the need for legging.
power
▪ The court would have power to dispense with the non-owner's consent if justified.
service
▪ The club now have no option but to dispense with his services.
▪ Standardization was very important to the Progressives, because the political machines of the day often dispensed services unevenly.
▪ Being able to dispense with the services of an interpreter is a big incentive to fluency.
▪ I hope he won't be too wary about dispensing with the services of some of those announcers - and quick.
▪ I ventured on one or two occasions to suggest that he might find some way of dispensing with her services.
▪ There was never any question of dispensing with the services of an emperor.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ More than 100 writers came to hear Wentworth dispense advice.
▪ The Reed County Clinic dispenses medication and makes referrals.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Generic substitution enables the same drug to be dispensed by the chemist, albeit under a different band name.
▪ Private industry uses them to dispense nutrition information.
▪ Selective assessment can not be dispensed with while there is a shortage of resources to meet individual needs.
▪ The escorts handle all logistic details and also dispense advice on matters of protocol and decorum.
▪ The exam measures knowledge and competence to operate standard ophthalmic equipment and fit, adjust and dispense eyeglasses.
▪ This done by placing a 50 pence piece in a ticket dispensing machine.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dispense

Dispense \Dis*pense"\, v. i.

  1. To compensate; to make up; to make amends. [Obs.]

    One loving hour For many years of sorrow can dispense.
    --Spenser.

  2. To give dispensation. He [the pope] can also dispense in all matters of ecclesiastical law. --Addis & Arnold (Cath. Dict. ) To dispense with.

    1. To permit the neglect or omission of, as a form, a ceremony, an oath; to suspend the operation of, as a law; to give up, release, or do without, as services, attention, etc.; to forego; to part with.

    2. To allow by dispensation; to excuse; to exempt; to grant dispensation to or for. [Obs.] ``Conniving and dispensing with open and common adultery.''
      --Milton.

    3. To break or go back from, as one's word. [Obs.]
      --Richardson.

Dispense

Dispense \Dis*pense"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Dispensed; p. pr. & vb. n. Dispensing.] [F. dispenser, L. dispensare, intens. of dispendere. See Dispend.]

  1. To deal out in portions; to distribute; to give; as, the steward dispenses provisions according directions; Nature dispenses her bounties; to dispense medicines.

    He is delighted to dispense a share of it to all the company.
    --Sir W. Scott.

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

    While you dispense the laws, and guide the state.
    --Dryden.

  3. To pay for; to atone for. [Obs.]

    His sin was dispensed With gold, whereof it was compensed.
    --Gower.

  4. To exempt; to excuse; to absolve; -- with from.

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

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

Dispense

Dispense \Dis*pense"\, n. [Cf. F. dispense dispensation. See Dispense, v. t.] Dispensation; exemption. [Obs.]

Dispense

Dispense \Dis*pense"\, n. [OF. despense, F. d['e]pense.] Expense; profusion; outlay. [Obs.]

It was a vault built for great dispense.
--Spenser.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dispense

early 14c., from Old French dispenser "give out" (13c.), from Latin dispensare "disburse, administer, distribute (by weight)," frequentative of dispendere "pay out," from dis- "out" (see dis-) + pendere "to pay, weigh" (see pendant).\n

\nIn Medieval Latin, dispendere was used in the ecclesiastical sense of "grant license to do what is forbidden or omit what is required" (a power of popes, bishops, etc.), and thus acquired a sense of "grant remission from punishment or exemption from law," hence "to do away with" (1570s), "do without" (c.1600). Older sense is preserved in dispensary. Related: Dispensed; dispensing.

Wiktionary
dispense

n. 1 (context obsolete English) cost, expenditure. 2 (context obsolete English) The act of dispensing, dispensation. vb. 1 To issue, distribute, or put out. 2 To apply, as laws to particular cases; to administer; to execute; to manage; to direct. 3 To supply or make up a medicine or prescription. 4 To eliminate or do without; used intransitively with ''with''. 5 (context obsolete English) To give a dispensation to (someone); to excuse. 6 (context intransitive obsolete English) To compensate; to make up; to make amends.

WordNet
dispense
  1. v. administer or bestow, as in small portions; "administer critical remarks to everyone present"; "dole out some money"; "shell out pocket money for the children"; "deal a blow to someone" [syn: distribute, administer, mete out, deal, parcel out, lot, shell out, deal out, dish out, allot, dole out]

  2. grant a dispensation; grant an exemption; "I was dispensed from this terrible task"

  3. give or apply (medications) [syn: administer]

Usage examples of "dispense".

He would be acceptable as an emergency anesthetist at those times when I had to dispense with the regular man.

In the spacious anteroom are three-way floor-length mirrors, a long vanity with tissues and cotton balls and individual mirrors, dispensers for lotions and astringent cleansers, little squirt bottles of antistatic and hairspray, nail buffers, a vending machine dispensing individual vials of various scents at a cost per ounce as exorbitant as if it were Parisian perfume.

In my dress whites, accompanied by the chief petty officer and a midshipman, I inspected each crew berth and its occupants, who stood at attention while I coldly scrutinized lockers, bunks, and men, liberally dispensing demerits for infractions.

Madame Viscioletta, whom I went to see every day, treated me as the Florentine widow had done, though the widow required forms and ceremonies which I could dispense with in the presence of the fair Viscioletta, who was nothing else than a professional courtezan, though she called herself a virtuosa.

Beamish, our first, if not our only philosophical beau and a gentleman of some thoughtfulness, that the social English require tyrannical government as much as the political are able to dispense with it: and this he explained by an exposition of the character of a race possessed of the eminent virtue of individual selfassertion, which causes them to insist on good elbowroom wherever they gather together.

It must not be supposed that the sense for facts, the historical sense, dispenses with creative thinking.

Lord North will permit me to express the feelings of friendship in the language of truth: but even truth and friendship should be silent, if he still dispensed the favors of the crown.

Most of the grog shops were open, barkeeps dispensing Injun whisky from barrels to long-haired flatboat men across planks laid on barrels, white men grouped around makeshift tables playing cards, and small groups of black men visible in alleyways, on their knees in the mud and weeds, shooting dice.

When he saw that I had plenty of friends, he thought I could dispense with his society, and only thought of amusing himself.

If agents of the national economic interest cannot be trusted to fulfill their responsibilities without some system of detailed censure and supervision they should be entirely dispensed with.

Such formalities were dispensed with at Auschwitz when the massive gassings began.

Darwin was perfectly innocent of any intention of getting rid of mind, and did not, probably, care the toss of sixpence whether the universe was instinct with mind or no - what he did care about was carrying off the palm in the matter of descent with modification, and the distinctive feature was an adjunct with which his nervous, sensitive, Gladstonian nature would not allow him to dispense.

Through the open doorway a slatternly woman was visible behind a plank set on a couple of kegs, dispensing what might charitably be termed whisky to a barefoot white man in the togs and tarred pigtail of a British sailor, a keelboatman whose clothing and body could be smelled from the door, and a couple of the weariest, grubbiest whores January had ever seen in his life.

The knowledge with which Ezekiel had entrusted High Priest Khatin was far too potent to dispense except to those for whom it was meant.

He was largehearted in his sovereignty, dispensing benedictions to every quarter, a healer and teacher, prepared to animate what was moribund in me, to lash what was reluctant, to tease and feed the smallest fires of my mind.