Sufferance meaning

sŭf'ər-əns, sŭf'rəns
Patient endurance, especially of pain or distress.
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Suffering; misery.
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Sanction or permission implied or given by failure to prohibit; tacit consent; tolerance.
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The power or capacity to endure or tolerate pain, distress, etc.
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Consent, permission, or sanction implied by failure to interfere or prohibit; toleration.
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Suffering.
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See tenancy.
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(archaic) Endurance, especially patiently, of pain or adversity.
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(archaic) Suffering; pain, misery.
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(UK, historical) A permission granted by the customs authorities for the shipment of goods.
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on sufferance
  • Allowed or tolerated but not supported or encouraged.
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Idioms and Phrasal Verbs

Origin of sufferance

  • Middle English suffrance from Old French sufrance from Latin sufferentia from sufferēns sufferent- present participle of sufferre to suffer suffer
    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
  • From Anglo-Norman suffraunce, from Late Latin sufferentia.
    From Wiktionary

Sufferance Sentence Examples

  • There is no tenancy by sufferance against the crown.

  • Permanent greatness and secular security were within her reach at the commencement of the Vasa period; how was it, then, that at the end of that period, only fifty years later, Poland had already sunk irredeemably into much the same position as Turkey occupies now, the position of a moribund state, existing on sufferance simply because none was yet quite prepared to administer the coup de grace?

  • Ministries which exist by sufferance are necessarily compelled to adapt their measures to the wishes of those who permit them to continue in power.

  • The Roman nobility, resting wholly on sufferance, was overthrown by the ambition of one of its own members.

  • Austria, shorn of her fairest provinces, robbed of her oversea commerce, bankrupt and surrounded on all sides by the territories of the French emperor and his allies, seemed to exist only on sufferance, and had ceased to have any effective authority in Germanynow absolutely in the power of Napoleon, who proved this in 1810 by annexing the whole of the northern coast as far as the Elbe to his empire.

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