Allow meaning 'provide the ability to'

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:33 PM -0700 8/31/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary has it:
>http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=2229&dict=CALD
>
>   but many others do not.  Your sentence sounds unremarkable to me,
>though if it occurred to me to think about it I might have replaced
>"allow" with "enable" simply because the latter is a little more
>precise. Or something.
>
>   But I'm quite surprised that the dictionaries you mention overlook
>this nuance.  I doubt that your colleague's objection is a
>"shibboleth," which implies that a great many people have heard of
>it and observe it.  Any objection on principle to your usage is news
>to me.
>
>   JL

Besides which, for me (and I suspect lots of others), "permit" is
perfectly good in the same context as well as "allow", so the
'definitions' you cite don't really constrain the semantics.

LH

>
>   Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Geoff Nathan
>Subject: Allow meaning 'provide the ability to'
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I'm having a small debate with a local prescriptivist over something I'm
>writing to advertise an upcoming conference on e-Portfolios. I had written:
>
>>  E-Portfolios are a relatively new electronic tool allowing students to
>>  >assemble an online summary of their academic careers (papers, films,
>>  >performances, poems, foreign language abilities).
>and was told 'allow' means 'permit'. My usage struck me as totally
>unremarkable, so I went to the OED, Dictionary.com and MerriamWebster
>Online, and found, to my astonishment, that none agreed with me,
>providing no senses like the one I used here. Am I missing something?
>Have I run across a new shibboleth? Or new to me?
>I can easily construct a plausible story for the semantics of the
>extension, but I'm surprised it hasn't made it to dictionaries. Or is
>this slightly metaphorical use so common as not to need explication?
>
>--
>Geoffrey S. Nathan
>Department of English/Computing and Information Technology
>Wayne State University
>Detroit, MI, 48202
>
>Phones: C&IT (313) 577-1259/English (313) 577-8621
>
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