Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Characterized by or performing acts of kindness or charity.
- adjective Producing benefit; beneficial.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Doing or effecting good; performing acts of kindness and charity; marked by or resulting from good will.
- Synonyms Beneficent, Beneficial, bountiful, bounteous, liberal, munificent, generous, kind. Beneficent always implies a kind and worthy purpose back of that to which the adjective applies; beneficial does not.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Doing or producing good; performing acts of kindness and charity; characterized by beneficence.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Given to acts that are kind, charitable,
philanthropic orbeneficial .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective doing or producing good
- adjective generous in assistance to the poor
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Iran diplomacy had broken up and Obama in Oslo reclaimed for America the title of beneficent world garrison state.
David Bromwich: Obama's Drift Toward War With Iran David Bromwich 2012
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On the other hand, maybe we think that governments do behave, at least some of the time, in beneficent fashion.
Teaching Un-Normal Economics, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Iran diplomacy had broken up and Obama in Oslo reclaimed for America the title of beneficent world garrison state.
David Bromwich: Obama's Drift Toward War With Iran David Bromwich 2012
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Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles.
CHAPTER IX 2010
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Still in beneficent mood, the guards allowed the prisoners to play musical instruments for two hours each evening and permitted a concert on Easter Sunday.
A MAN SENT FROM GOD 1983
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Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles.
Chapter 9 1917
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Cholera has been rightly called the beneficent sanitary inspector of the world.
The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis Ellice Hopkins
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This has been boldly called a beneficent arrangement, in order that the young cuckoo may get sufficient food, and that its foster-brothers may perish before they had acquired much feeling!
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Not that he had any faith in the so-called beneficent influences of time -- for what young lover is willing to believe that the slow drag of months and years over his passion will crush all life from it at last?
An Algonquin Maiden A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada A. Ethelwyn Wetherald 1898
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When we have completed the conquest of the earth, when we have discovered God's laws of matter and force and are able to keep them, it means the abolition of all unnecessary pain, unnecessary pain, I say; for all that pain which is not beneficent, which is not inherent in the nature of things, is remedial.
Our Unitarian Gospel 1879
dbekeny commented on the word beneficent
OZ'S VOICE
The beneficent Oz has every intention of
granting....
July 8, 2010