Suffraunce

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Archaic patience in bearing pain, hardship or distress ; an old term for toleration or implied permission granted by someone in authority
2. The quiet endurance of hardship, as an older English usage describes it ; an earlier way of referring to tolerance or consent that is never formally stated
3. Old-fashioned bearing of affliction with patience ; a dated sense of allowance or unspoken acceptance given by those who hold power

Etymology: "Suffraunce" is an older English noun meaning patient endurance, or tacit consent: the willingness to let something happen without objecting. It is a close relative of "sufferance," and the two words have been slipping in and out of English for centuries as near-synonyms. Both descend from the Latin verb "sufferre," to bear up under or undergo, built from "sub-" (under) and "ferre" (to bear). The Latin verb is the ancestor of "suffer" as well, so the family includes the everyday idea of pain alongside the quieter idea of putting up with something. Over time the sense of "suffrance" narrowed toward tolerance, and "suffrance" in the phrase "on sufferance" came to mean permission granted reluctantly and without formal sanction. The spelling "suffraunce" is an earlier variant that appears in Middle English and was used through the early modern period, where it was often written with the extra "u" and "a" that many English words of that era carried. It did not survive in common use, and today "sufferance" is the form readers meet.