pension
Americannoun
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pensions
plural
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a fixed amount, other than wages, paid at regular intervals to a person or to the person's surviving dependents in consideration of past services, age, merit, poverty, injury or loss sustained, etc..
a retirement pension.
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an allowance, annuity, or subsidy.
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(in France and elsewhere in continental Europe)
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a boardinghouse or small hotel.
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room and board.
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verb (used with object)
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pensions,
present (3rd person singular)
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pensioned,
past participle, past
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pensioning
present participle
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to grant or pay a pension to.
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to cause to retire on a pension (usually followed byoff ).
noun
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a relatively cheap boarding house
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another name for full board
noun
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a regular payment made by the state to people over a certain age to enable them to subsist without having to work
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a regular payment made by an employer to former employees after they retire
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a regular payment made to a retired person as the result of his or her contributions to a personal pension scheme
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any regular payment made on charitable grounds, by way of patronage, or in recognition of merit, service, etc
a pension paid to a disabled soldier
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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nonpensionableadjective
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pensionableadjective
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pensionlessadjective
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unpensionableadjective
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unpensionedadjective
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unpensioningadjective
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well-pensionedadjective
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pensionablyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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pensionsimple
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pensionssimple
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have pensionedperfect
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has pensionedperfect
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am pensioningprogressive
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are pensioningprogressive
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is pensioningprogressive
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have been pensioningperfect progressive
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has been pensioningperfect progressive
Past
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pensionedsimple
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had pensionedperfect
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was pensioningprogressive
-
were pensioningprogressive
-
had been pensioningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of pension
First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English, from Old French pensïon, from Latin pēnsiōn-, stem of pēnsiō “measured weight,” hence, “payment, rent,” from pēns(us) “weighed” (past participle of pendere “to hang, weigh out, pay by weight”) + -iō -ion
Explanation
A pension is a regular payment, usually from a company you worked for, that allows you to survive without working after you retire. In used to be common for someone to spend their entire career at one company, and then retire at 65 and receive a pension: regular payments of enough money to live on in old age. Nowadays, not that many jobs offer pensions, and it's hard for companies that do to pay for them, which is why you're likely to hear this word when people are arguing about budget cuts. It's also a verb: if you pension your employee, you give them a pension. How nice of you!
Vocabulary lists containing pension
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
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This Week in Words: February 16 - 22, 2019
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The Great Depression and The New Deal
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Only 9% of private-sector workers, or more than 11.3 million, have a traditional pension funded by their employers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
The demographic shift could put pressure on pension systems and weaken the balance between working-age people and retirees.
From Barron's ● Aug. 13, 2026
The lotteries take no financial risk offering that annuity since they buy zero-coupon Treasury bonds maturing on those dates, much the way corporate pension funds do.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026
Because the GPO has been repealed, her teacher’s pension will no longer reduce or eliminate her spousal benefit.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026
“You wouldn’t take the pension back, would you? If you do, I’ll have no husband.”
From "Homeless Bird" by Gloria Whelan
For a half-century, Congress has been offering middle- and working-class Americans options for tax-advantaged individual retirement savings, largely to compensate for the disappearance of traditional pensions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
When the traditional IRA was created in 1975, lawmakers confined the accounts to middle- and working-class households without access to company pensions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
Jemma Slingo, pensions and investment specialist at investment firm Fidelity International, says female investors "appear more likely to connect investing with real-life goals, from building emergency savings to looking after children."
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
Aksia, a research and advisory firm to institutions including pensions, family offices and sovereign-wealth funds, made note of Aschenbrenner’s intellect and network in a March 2025 assessment for clients after meeting with him.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
After asking several widows, I found the government building where pensions were given out.
From "Homeless Bird" by Gloria Whelan
It is the reason why James Anderson was pensioned off in 2024.
From BBC ● Nov. 21, 2025
The family is now composed of the same sort of banal attention-seekers and time-servers as the rest of Europe’s pensioned aristocracy, which includes Facebook-addled coup plotters and Epstein island guests of honor.
From Slate ● Apr. 21, 2023
The airline struggled with a 51-day pilots' strike between September and November 2017, grounding half its fleet and resulting in dozens of pilots being fired, while others resigned or were pensioned off.
From Reuters ● Nov. 25, 2021
A horse is pensioned when it is no longer available for breeding.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 16, 2020
“Not that it need come to that,” Mr. Owen blurted, meaning Tansy might marry and be saved before she was pensioned off.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
Downpour and Inferno are states that people drive between pensioning their senators and whitegoods.
From New York Times ● Apr. 15, 2022
If that meant that the company was pensioning him off, Mr. Pratt must have had his tongue in his cheek.
From Time Magazine Archive
In general, pensioning ministers has special actuarial aspects.
From Time Magazine Archive
When Iowa sent a pension to Joseph Newt Finney, she joined no less than 26 other States, Alaska and Hawaii, in pensioning her aged.*
From Time Magazine Archive
The revenue of the estate is to be spent in enriching the collections, in encouraging scientific research, in pensioning aged authors, artists, and scientific discoverers.
From France in the Nineteenth Century by Elizabeth Latimer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
