dole

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“
I know desperate times make people do even stupider things but going on the dole is the last thing people would rather do.

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Definitions (30)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (8)

  1. noun Charitable dispensation of goods, especially money, food, or clothing.
  2. noun A share of money, food, or clothing that has been charitably given.
  3. noun Chiefly British The distribution by the government of relief payments to the unemployed; welfare.
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Examples (50)

  • Because one irony of a rising number of British workers on the dole is that Job Centres are now so busy they are recruiting 6,000 new staff - one of the only operations nationally taking people on. —  Shropshire Star
  • While for most upstanding British citizens the dole is something to be feared at the moment, in the Philippines, the DOLE really is your friend. —  Telegraph Blogs
  • In the U.K., being on the dole is now more profitable than holding an average job. —  lex icon
  • The waning tax intake, which helps the capuchins provide food to these people, is not to be bolstered, and the amount of people drawing the dole is to be increased. —  Irish Blogs
  • The more people who draw the dole, the more money taken out from the exchequer. —  Irish Blogs
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Used in the same contextWord Family

dole:   doled ·  doling ·  doles
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (9)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. Middle English dol, part, share, from Old English dāl; see dail- in Indo-European roots.
  2. Middle English dol, from Old French dol, deul, from Late Latin dolus, from Latin dolēre, to feel pain, grieve.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (7)

  1. from Middle English dole, dol, earlier dale, dal, from Anglo-Saxon dāl, a division, a part, ge-dāl, division; the same as the more common umlauted form, Anglo-Saxon dǣl, Middle English del, English deal, a part, etc.: see deal.
  2. from dole, n.; ult. the same as deal, v.
  3. Also dial. (Scots) dool, dule, dill, from Middle English dol, doel, dowle, duel, deol, from Old French dol, doel, duel, French deuil (= Provencal dol = Spanish duelo = Portuguese (obsolete) doilo = Italian duolo), mourning, grief, verbal noun of Old French doloir, French douloir = Provencal Spanish doler = Portuguese doer = Italian dolere, from Latin dolere, feel pain, grieve. Hence also (from Latin dolere) ult. English dolent, dolor, condole.
  4. = French dol = Provencal dol = Spanish Portuguese Italian dolo, from Latin dolus, artifice, wile, guile, deceit, fraud, from Greek δόλος, a bait, a cunning artifice, wile, guile, deceit, akin to δέλεαρ, also δέλος, a bait.
  5. Also English dial. dool, dowl, Scots also dool, dule, the goal in a game, dule, a boundary, landmark, = Dutch doel, neuter, the mark, butt, mound of earth used as a butt, in archery; cf. doel, masculine, the place where the armed burgesses used to assemble. The sense ‘mound of earth’ is correlative to that of Middle High German G. dole, a canal, from Old High German dola, an underground drain, entrance to a mine, etc. Cf. Icelandic dœla, a groove or trough, = Norwegian dœla, a trough, channel, a little stream, etc. Cf. dole.
  6. English dial., also dowel; cf. Norwegian döl, a little dale, a meadow-lot near the house, = Icelandic döl, dœl, a little dale, from Norwegian dal = Icelandic dalr = English dale: see dale. Cf. dole.
  7. French doler, pare, Old French doler, hew, plane, from Latin dolare, hew, plane.
 

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/doʊl/
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