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:
The new pension agreement supports a rise in potential cash distributions at BT to 1.5 billion pounds in fiscal 2027, increasing 10% per year to 2 billion pounds in fiscal 2030, BofA says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
Unions hope for a turnout comparable to France's pension reform protests in 2023 that saw over one million people march.
From Barron's ● Nov. 5, 2026
I will always remember an elderly lady in Bootle, Merseyside, who had just collected her pension and insisted on putting £20 in a collection bucket as we walked down the north west coast.
From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2026
What happens when Social Security isn’t enough to cover basic living expenses, when working is no longer physically possible and when there is no savings account, pension or family safety net?
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026
I doubted that I could live on the pension alone, but my silver earrings would help until I could find a job of some sort.
From "Homeless Bird" by Gloria Whelan
Share ownership is widespread in the United States, where individual retirement funds invested in stocks and bonds are much more prevalent than government-funded pensions.
From Barron's ● Nov. 6, 2026
It held pensions and some other public funds and, after its collapse earlier this week, millions could not access their accounts.
From BBC ● Nov. 5, 2026
Ueno says it has over three million customers -- nearly half of Paraguay's population -- and manages millions of dollars in pensions and other state funds.
From Barron's ● Nov. 4, 2026
France promised generous pensions, short workweeks and broad public services.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 3, 2026
I don’t recognize any of the people guarding me; Thibaut and Engel are all tucked up in their pensions, and von Linden is busy tormenting that screaming French girl.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
By then she had already been medically pensioned out of West Yorkshire Police.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2023
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
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
If that meant that the company was pensioning him off, Mr. Pratt must have had his tongue in his cheek.
From Time Magazine Archive
The fifteen million dollars which Mr. Carnegie has given for a pension-fund for superannuated college professors is quite another thing from pensioning a man so he will be free to work out his ideal.
From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 11 Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen by Elbert Hubbard
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
