permission

UK/pəˈmɪʃ.ən/US/pəɹˈmɪʃ.ən/

nounA2Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,092 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: permissions

Permission is the go-ahead from somebody in charge. You may do the thing now, and you could not before.

The word takes to and a verb, or for a noun: permission to leave, permission for the extension. Planning permission is the British term for local authority approval to build. There is a standard pair of phrases about attitude, since asking permission is the careful route and seeking forgiveness afterwards is the other one. The verb is permit, which is also a noun with the stress moved to the front.

Definitions of permission

1nounpermissionOfficial or formal consent to do something.A2
“She had permission to leave early.”

Where it comes from

Latin
permissiō
Middle French
permission
Middle English
permision
English, today
permission

From Middle English permision, permission, permissioun, permyssion, from Middle French permission, from Latin permissiō. Equivalent to permit + ion. Mostly replaced native leave, from lēaf.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 10 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

permission in the wild

In computer security, an access-control list (ACL) is a list of permissions associated with a system resource (object or facility).
Access-control list
If the Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) profile CONSOLE CLASS(TSOAUTH) has an ACL that contains(ALICE:READ), this would give ALICE permission to use the TSO CONSOLE command.
Access-control list
Lawrence Lessig describes permission culture in contrast with free culture.
Permission culture
Set bits of the mask disallow the permission and clear bits of the mask allow the permission.
Umask
Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission.
Public domain

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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