Disallowed

How to spell disallowed

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disallowed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disallowed mean?

1. verbRefused to permit, or formally rejected as invalid.

Disallowed in a sentence

• The referee disallowed the goal for offside.

• The auditor disallowed several expenses that lacked receipts.

Where does disallowed come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past form of 'disallow', built from the negating prefix 'dis-', meaning 'not' or 'the reverse of', attached to the verb 'allow'. 'Allow' itself reached English in the 1300s through Old French 'alouer', which carried two strands of meaning that later blended: one from Latin 'allaudare', 'to praise or approve', and one from Latin 'allocare', 'to assign or place', the same root that gives us 'allocate'. By the late medieval period 'allow' had settled into the sense of granting permission or accepting something as valid. Adding 'dis-' simply flips that meaning, so 'disallow' means to refuse to permit or to reject as invalid, a usage common in sport, law, and accounting. The spelling keeps both the double letter from 'allow' and the single 's' of 'dis-', and writers sometimes trip over whether the seam doubles up, but it is a clean dis- plus allow.

How the word is built

• dis- (not, reversal)
• allow (to permit)
• -ed (past tense/participle)