pension
Americannoun
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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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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
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were pensioningprogressive
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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:
The lower a pension fund’s ratio, the harder it is to dig out of the hole even as taxpayers shovel out more and more money to keep the shortfall from growing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
Double-check the terms of the survivor options of your military pension and state pension.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
Ever wanted to write a song so huge it becomes your pension plan?
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
The government is looking to encourage pension funds, including the $1.8 trillion GPIF, to make further investments in Japanese financial assets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
She was a fifty-four-year-old widow living off a small pension and social security with five kids still left to raise.
From "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride
Long-shot goals, like restoring auto worker pensions, could be in play in the next round of talks in 2028, said Art Wheaton, a labor expert at Cornell University.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
Given that your pensions and disability payments will drop to around $30,000 a year after your death, it makes sense to maximize your Social Security benefits.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
Social Security was meant to be one leg of a “three-legged stool” of retirement income, with the other two legs being workers’ own savings and their company-provided pensions.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 7, 2026
Senior doctors across England have voted in favour of strike action in the future over pay and pensions.
From BBC ● Jul. 6, 2026
The President awarded the three detectives the People’s Medal and gave them lifelong pensions.
From "The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm" by Nancy Farmer
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 following year, four years after the explosion, he was pensioned out of the army and started a university degree in psychology.
From BBC ● Dec. 6, 2021
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
It’s also an issue in the United States, although a lot of independent groups and regulators put forth measures to find homes for retired and pensioned horses.
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
Hastily whipped together and jammed through to passage in the feverish closing days of the last Congress, the Act provided for compulsory pensioning of all U. S. railroad employes�about 1,000,000.
From Time Magazine Archive
More important, he ruled that pensioning railway employes had nothing to do with regulating interstate commerce.
From Time Magazine Archive
No European nation thinks of pensioning an ex-soldier simply because he was drafted to fight for his country.
From Time Magazine Archive
The new emperor showed himself more merciful, by pensioning instead of destroying his unfortunate foes.
From Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) The Romance of Reality by Morris, Charles
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.
