Other forms: licensed, licensing, licenses
A license is official permission to do something, and the card or paper that proves you have it. The plastic rectangle in your wallet with your photo and your birthday on it, handed across the desk at the car hire counter.
Spelling splits the Atlantic here. America writes license for everything; Britain writes licence for the noun and license for the verb, the same trick as practice and practise. A pub with permission to sell alcohol is licensed; a driver caught twice may have a license suspended, revoked or taken away. Software comes with one too. And poetic license is the freedom a writer takes with the facts. You hold a license to do something — the phrase takes TO, and a driver's license is your license to drive, not for driving.
1nounlicenseOfficial permission to do or own something, and the document that proves it.~96%
“You need a license to drive a bus.”
synonyms: permit, certificate
2verbgiveTo give official permission for something.~2%
“The council licensed the cafe to sell alcohol until midnight.”
3nounfreedomFreedom to depart from the usual rules or from the facts, especially in art.~2%
“The film takes some license with the real events.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
license is an official permission.
Also accepted in games: licence, driving license, driver's license
A license is permission to be allowed. English took it through Old French from Latin licentia, "license", which grew out of licere, "to be allowed". The Latin verb is the same one hiding inside licit and illicit.
Latin
licentia — license
Old French
licence
Middle English
licence
English, today
license
Built from
From Middle English licence, licens, lisence, lissens, licance, from Old French licence, from Latin licentia (“license”), from licens, present participle of licere (“to be allowed, be allowable”); compare linquere, Ancient Greek λείπω (“leave”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA