Permission

//pəˈmɪʃən// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    authorisation; consent (especially formal consent from someone in authority) countable, uncountable

    "Sire, do I have your permission to execute this traitor?"

  2. 2
    the act of giving a formal (usually written) authorization wordnet
  3. 3
    The act of permitting. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    approval to do something wordnet
  5. 5
    Flags or access control lists pertaining to a file that dictate who can access it, and how. countable, uncountable

    "I used the "chmod" command to change the file's permission."

Verb
  1. 1
    To grant or obtain authorization for. transitive

    "Photographs also must be permissioned and credited, although a corpus of copyright-free images does exist online."

Synonyms

All synonyms
licensepassacceptanceaccordacquiescenceadmission

Example

More examples

"You ought to ask for your teacher's permission."

Etymology

From Middle English permision, permission, permissioun, permyssion, from Middle French permission, from Latin permissiō. Equivalent to permit + -ion. Mostly replaced native English leave, from Old English lēaf (“permission”).

Related phrases

it's better to ask forgiveness than permissionit's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permissionpermission slippermission structureplanning permissionlet do

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.