afford

verb

1. To incur, stand, or bear without serious detriment, as an act which might under other circumstances be injurious; (usually after an expression of ability, as could, able, difficult) to be able or rich enough; to spare.

   “I think we can afford the extra hour it will take.  We can only afford to buy a small car at the moment.”

   ““[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?[…]””

   “If a party member can afford the fee, then the syncophants^([sic]) will go to work.”

   “Of course, no one called the fire department. No one would take on fire service fees just to save an unoccupied garage. Most of our households couldn’t afford another big bill, anyway. The water wasted on putting out the fire was going to be hard enough to pay for.”

   “Ms Camisa and her husband have had to rejig their finances to afford tuition.”

2. (obsolete)To offer, provide, or supply, as in selling, granting or expending, with profit, or without too great a loss.

   “Alfred affords his goods cheaper than Bantock.”

3. (rare)To give forth; to supply, yield, or produce as the natural result, fruit, or issue.

   “Grapes afford wine.  Olives afford oil.  The earth affords fruit.  The sea affords an abundant supply of fish.”

   “The percentage of nutritive elements contained in the parsnip is very small; so small, indeed, that one pound of parsnips affords hardly one fifth of an ounce of nitrogenous or muscle-forming material.”

4. To give, grant, or confer, with a remoter reference to its being the natural result; to provide; to furnish.

   “A good life affords consolation in old age.”

   “One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.”

   “This was done, and in many cases still is done by the main-line railway groups, through the exercise of running powers, which on application to Parliament by the company using them have been granted for the express purpose of affording this access without the necessity for building independent tracks. In other cases, such running powers have been granted without recourse to Parliament, by voluntary agreement between the parties.”

   “The 2,800 h.p. Brush "Falcon" diesel-electric prototype Co-Co with two Bristol-Siddeley-Maybach high-speed engines will be afforded facilities for service trials on the G.N. main line when it makes its debut - in the autumn of this year, if construction proceeds according to schedule.”

   “Writing a “Treehouse of Horror” segment has to be both exhilarating and daunting. It’s exhilarating because it affords writers all the freedom in the world.”