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Definition of "benevolent" []

  • Characterized by or suggestive of doing good. (adjective)
  • Of, concerned with, or organized for the benefit of charity. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "benevolent" in a sentence
  • "It was only the other day I read in the report of the Consumers’ League in my own city that “a benevolent institution, ” when found giving out clothing to be made in tenement houses that were not licensed, and taken to task for it, asked the agents of the League to “show some way in which the law could be evaded”; but it is just as well for that “benevolent institution” that name and address were wanting, or it might find its funds running short unaccountably."
  • "The term benevolent compassion puzzled Noam Cohen, executive editor of Inside.com and a former copy editor at the New York Times."
  • "Well, I don't like the term benevolent dictator, and I don't think that it's my job or my role in the world of ideas to be the dictator of the future of all human knowledge compiled by the world."