Provision

How to spell provision

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce provision

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does provision mean?

1. nounThe action of supplying something, or an amount of something made available for future use.
2. nounA condition or clause within a contract, law, or formal agreement.
3. verbTo supply something, especially food, equipment, or resources, for future use.

Provision in a sentence

• noun

  The council promised better provision of social housing.

• noun

  A key provision of the lease forbids subletting the flat.

• verb

  The team had to provision the expedition with months of food.

• noun

  The budget includes a generous provision for staff training.

• noun

  The new law contains a provision protecting part-time workers.

• verb

  Engineers can provision each new laptop before it reaches the user.

Where does provision come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Provision comes from the Latin provisio, meaning 'a looking ahead' or 'foresight', which was formed from the verb providere, 'to foresee' or 'to provide for'. That verb breaks neatly into pro-, meaning 'ahead', and videre, meaning 'to see', so the literal sense is to see something coming and prepare for it. English borrowed the word from Old French in the late 1300s, at first carrying the idea of foresight and the steps taken in advance, which is why a provision can be both a supply laid in for the future and a clause inserted into an agreement to cover what might happen. The same videre root gives us 'vision', 'visible' and 'provide', and noticing that shared 'vis' helps fix the spelling, since the trap is hearing the unstressed middle and the soft 'sion' ending. Note that the ending is spelled -sion, not -tion, a result of the Latin -sio that followed the s-sound of the stem.

How the word is built

• pro- (forward, ahead)
• vis (from videre: to see)
• -ion (noun suffix)