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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

tolerance.

The ability to endure pain or hardship; endurance.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈtɒl.ə.ɹəns/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɑ.lə.ɹəns/General-American, dialectal/ˈtɒl.ə.ɹəns/Canada, dialectal/ˈtɔl.ə.ɹəns/Australia
  1. The ability to endure pain or hardship; endurance.

    obsolete · uncountable
  2. The ability or practice of tolerating; an acceptance of or patience with the beliefs, opinions or practices of others; a lack of bigotry.

    uncountable
  3. The ability of the body (or other organism) to resist the action of a poison, to cope with a dangerous drug or to survive infection by an organism.

    uncountable
  4. The ability of the body (or other organism) to resist the action of a poison, to cope with a dangerous drug or to survive infection by an organism. Resistance to drunkenness.

    uncountable
    Since he hadn't had any alcohol in years, his tolerance was very low, and it only took two drinks for him to get sloshed.
  5. The variation or deviation from a standard, especially the maximum permitted variation in an engineering measurement.

    countable
    Our customers can generally accept ten times the tolerance which we can achieve in our machining operations.
  6. The ability of the body to accept a tissue graft without rejection.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle English toleraunce, borrowed from Old French tolerance, from Latin tolerantia (“endurance”), from tolerāns, present participle of, and participial adjective from Latin tolerō (“to endure”).

verb/ˈtɒl.ə.ɹəns/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɑ.lə.ɹəns/General-American, dialectal/ˈtɒl.ə.ɹəns/Canada, dialectal/ˈtɔl.ə.ɹəns/Australia
  1. To design or engineer a material to a specified tolerance.

Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle English toleraunce, borrowed from Old French tolerance, from Latin tolerantia (“endurance”), from tolerāns, present participle of, and participial adjective from Latin tolerō (“to endure”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.