Definition of "endowment" in 英语

noun

1. Something with which a person or thing is endowed.

   • I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world; that we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt; and that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments.
   • We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.

2. Property or funds invested for the support and benefit of a person or not-for-profit institution.

   • Not content with the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all "monopolizing and aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of Sight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling.
   • 1932, Robert Clarkson Clothier, after assuming the presidency of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey I seem to see a great university, great in endowment, in land, in buildings, in equipment, but greater still, second to none, in its practical idealism, and its social usefulness.

3. (insurance) Endowment assurance or pure endowment.

4. (Mormonism) A ceremony designed to prepare participants for their role in the afterlife.