entitlement

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

OED treats this only as a run-in, with the meaning "a means of entitling; a designation, name" and a single cite from 1835. Nothing to cover either the political or psychological uses of the term. If ever an entry cried out for out-of-sequence revision...

Other dicts have the political sense, as

 a government program providing benefits to members of a specified group; also : funds supporting or distributed by such a program (MW)
A government program that guarantees and provides benefits to a particular group (AHD)

These may be too vague; as I understand it, the idea of entitlement programs is that the funds are guaranteed to eligible recipients without regard to the cost in a given period and with no provision for government discretion if the qualifications are satisfied.

 MW also has a sense corresponding to the psychological use of the term: "belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges."   AHD has only "the state of being entitled," with the relevant sense of entitle as "To furnish with a right or claim to something." I don't think this does it for the psychological sense.

Note also that in the psychological sense 'sense of entitlement' almost always implies an unwarranted claim. "Unwarranted sense of entitlement" gets thousands of Google hits; "warranted sense of entitlement" gets 8. But just the bare "sense of entitlement" invariably implies a critical judgment.

Geoff

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