to be able to do, manage, or bear without serious consequence or adverse effect: The country can't afford another drought.
to be able to meet the expense of; have or be able to spare the price of: Can we afford a trip to Europe this year? The city can easily afford to repair the street.
to be able to give or spare: He can't afford the loss of a day.
to furnish; supply: The transaction afforded him a good profit.
to be capable of yielding or providing: The records afford no explanation.
to give or confer upon: to afford great pleasure to someone.
Origin of afford
before 1050; Middle English aforthen, iforthen,Old English geforthian to further, accomplish, equivalent to ge-y- + forthforth + -ian infinitive suffix
The equal protection women enjoyed, according to the Supreme Court, wasn’t as strong as the protection that the Constitution afforded against racial discrimination.
Ginsburg’s Legal Victories For Women Led To Landmark Anti-Discrimination Rulings For The LGBTQ Community, Too|LGBTQ-Editor|September 24, 2020|No Straight News
At some point we can’t afford some of our employees because we don’t have money coming in from our clients.
‘How much do we want to get screwed?’: Confessions of an agency exec on lack of payment due to coronavirus|Kristina Monllos|September 24, 2020|Digiday
The most advanced AI techniques require an enormous amount of computational resources, which increasingly only the wealthiest companies can afford.
OpenAI is giving Microsoft exclusive access to its GPT-3 language model|Niall Firth|September 23, 2020|MIT Technology Review
His family could not afford to send his grandmother to a nursing home with services like physical therapy.
He Wanted to Fix Rural America’s Broken Nursing Homes. Now, Taxpayers May Be on the Hook for $76 Million.|by Max Blau for Georgia Health News|September 22, 2020|ProPublica
There’s a certain part of the public that can afford it, and those sort of people want to know where the product is coming from.
Allbirds is stepping up for the planet—by treading lightly on it|sheilamarikar|September 21, 2020|Fortune
As a matter of dollars and cents, America in the short term may be able to afford disability and food stamps.
Bush, Christie, Romney: Who’ll Be the GOP Class Warrior?|Lloyd Green|December 15, 2014|DAILY BEAST
It represented everything about the kind of comfort and the little luxuries in life that a good glass of Scotch can afford us.
A Whisky Connoisseur Remembers That First Sip of The Macallan||December 10, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Selling off the extras, I saw my neighbor marvel at the scent and murmur that he wished he could afford one.
A Million Ways to Die in Prison|Daniel Genis|December 8, 2014|DAILY BEAST
He belongs to a gym, he can afford to pay for that: he can shower, he can keep his belongings in a series of lockers there.
This Fashion World Darling Is Homeless|Erica Wagner|December 2, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Women who could afford to make bail started being released every two hours early Wednesday afternoon.
Dispatch From USC Protests over Ferguson|Maya Richard Craven|November 30, 2014|DAILY BEAST
A boy's life in a secluded New England town in winter does not afford many points for illustration.
The Story of a Bad Boy|Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Meanwhile enough machinery and other equipment was being prepared and shipped from Canada to afford employment to 10,000 men.
The Story of the Great War, Volume VIII (of VIII)|various
The first are primarily social in purpose, and afford a place for the children of mothers who have to leave their homes for work.
My musical education, in spite of the limitations of opportunity just mentioned, was the best that the time could afford.
Reminiscences, 1819-1899|Julia Ward Howe.
We wondered how these unfashionable people about us could look so contented and afford to order such liberal supplies.
The Car That Went Abroad|Albert Bigelow Paine
British Dictionary definitions for afford
afford
/ (əˈfɔːd) /
verb
(preceded by can, could, etc) to be able to do or spare something, esp without incurring financial difficulties or without risk of undesirable consequenceswe can afford to buy a small house; I can afford to give you one of my chess sets; we can't afford to miss this play
to give, yield, or supplythe meeting afforded much useful information
Derived forms of afford
affordable, adjectiveaffordability, noun
Word Origin for afford
Old English geforthian to further, promote, from forthforth; the Old English prefix ge- was later reduced to a-, and the modern spelling (C16) is influenced by words beginning aff-