Dispensation

1. n. The relaxation of a law in a particular case; permission to do something forbidden, or to omit doing something enjoined; specifically, in the Roman Catholic Church, exemption from some ecclesiastical law or obligation to God which a man has incurred of his own free will (oaths, vows, etc.).
2. n. The act of dispensing or dealing out; distribution; often used of the distribution of good and evil by God to man, or more generically, of the acts and modes of his administration.
3. n. That which is dispensed, dealt out, or appointed; that which is enjoined or bestowed
4. n. A system of principles, promises, and rules ordained and administered; scheme; economy; as, the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.