subvention

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A subsidy; provision of financial or other support.

   “[…] the said religious shall […] pay all papal impositions, subventions, and contributions […]”

   “[…] the Crown-Prince, contrary to wont, broke silence, and begged some dole or subvention for these poor people; but there was nothing to be had.”

2. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)The act of coming under.

   “1744, Thomas Stackhouse, A New History of the Holy Bible, London: Stephen Austen, 2nd edition, Volume 2, Book 6, Chapter 2, p. 845, Now the only Ascension that we read of, besides these, is that of our blessed Saviour; and the Manner, in which he is said to have been carry’d up, was, by the Subvention of a Cloud, which rais’d him from the Ground […]”

3. (archaic, countable, uncountable)The act of relieving, as of a burden; support; aid; assistance; help.

   “[…] if we pray to God to remove a lesser judgement by way of subvention, questionlesse we may beseech him to deliver us from the great evill of a wounded conscience, by way of prevention.”

   “A small body of negroes defied the choicest troops of one of the greatest nations in the world, kept an extensive country in alarm, and were at length brought to surrender, only by means of a subvention still more extraordinary than their own mode of warfare.”

   “Let the young critics, who seek a cheap reputation for austerity, by cavilling at “incidental music,” set their faces rather against the attempt to justify inferior dramatic art by the subvention of a quite alien art like painting, of any art, indeed, whose sphere is only surface.”

verb

1. To subsidise.

   “His task was, it is true, made easier by the need of the English to remove troops to put down the 1745-6 Jacobite Rising, which the French had subventioned.”