benefit
• noun 1 advantage or profit. 2 a payment made by the state or an insurance scheme to someone entitled to receive it, e.g. an unemployed person. 3 a public performance to raise money for a charity. • verb (benefited or benefitted, benefiting or benefitting) 1 receive an advantage; profit. 2 bring advantage to. — PHRASES benefit of clergy 1 historical exemption of the English clergy and nuns from the jurisdiction of the ordinary civil courts. 2 ecclesiastical sanction or approval. the benefit of the doubt a concession that a person must be regarded as correct or innocent if the opposite has not been proven. — ORIGIN Latin benefactum ‘good deed’, from bene facere ‘do good’.
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