dispense

英文词源

dispense

dispense: [14] Dispense comes ultimately from Latin dispendere ‘weigh out’ (partial source of English spend). This was a compound verb formed from the prefix dis- ‘away’ and pendere ‘weigh’, a relative of pendēre ‘hang’, from which English gets pendulum, pendant, and penthouse. It had a derivative, dispensāre, denoting repeated action: hence ‘pay out, distribute’, senses which passed into English via Old French dispenser. In medieval Latin dispensāre also came to mean ‘administer justice’, and hence ‘exempt, condone’; this was the source of the English usage dispense with ‘do without’.
=> pendulum, pendant, penthouse, spend

dispense (v.)

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).

In 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.