Today’s rather surprising word is
Dispense.
How did one word get to have apparently opposing meanings? According to Chambers Dictionary, the root is Latin: dis– meaning “not” or “separate” and pensare, to weigh. So it should mean “not weigh” or “weigh into separate parts”. But neither of those appears to have anything to do with any of the definitions for the English word. If you can shed any light on that, I’d love to hear from you!
So what does it mean?
You can dispense both medicine and justice, if you’re properly qualified, in the sense of administer or dole out; to dispense also means to make up the medicine in the first place.
The poet Spenser used “dispense” to mean to make amends or to compound (in the sense of “to settle by agreement”). It can also mean expense or expenditure, which I suppose makes sense: you dispense money and that’s an expense. Dispense as a noun also, apparently, means supplies. “He had ample dispense of biscuits”? That doesn’t work for me – maybe I haven’t read the right poets. But a drinks dispenser is a supply of drink … ? No, it still doesn’t work. The drinks dispenser does the same job as the dispenser of law or medicines: it distributes or passes out.
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Not forgetting the drinks dispenser …
Dispensability means, perhaps surprisingly, able to be dispensed with or done without, inessential: “I can dispense with that – I really don’t need it”. How does that fit with medicine and the law, neither of which are dispensable? I think it ties in with the “handing out” meaning. If you dispense with something, you tend to pass it on (even if only to the bin).
A dispensary is where medicines are both made up and doled out, usually by a dispensing chemist or a doctor, and dispensation is the act of doling out both medicines and law. A merciful dispensation [ordering of events] by some higher power – Providence or God – is generally held to be a Good Thing. And a dispensation is the “rule” of a religious order or political system: “under the current dispensation…”.
But if you have a dispensation it means you have an exemption from the law, a licence not to follow the rules, which looks like the opposite of the previous definition. How can the law be dispensed if you have a dispensation? Er – because a dispensation is a legal document that over-rides the law. Of course, how silly of me…
Something else today’s word has cleared up for me: a dispensing optician can fit and sell specs and contact lenses, but he or she isn’t qualified to prescribe them. You probably knew that, but I didn’t.
There are probably lots of other dispens- words you know that I haven’t covered – if so, I’d love to hear from you: please comment below.
Meanwhile, it’s goodbye from me; another word tomorrow.
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