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on sufferance
Idioms and Phrases
Barely tolerated; agreed to but unwillingly. For example, They rarely put a non-academic on the panel, so obviously I was there on sufferance . This expression uses sufferance in the sense of “toleration,” a usage obsolete except in this idiom. [Mid-1500s]Example Sentences
It is a story about who gets to go where, who gets to exist safely in public, and who is only there on sufferance.
“The message they are getting is, ‘You are here on sufferance,’” he added.
They do have a certain adherence to the idea that this is the national homeland of Hindus, and everybody else is a second-class citizen, here only on sufferance.
What was worse, Lola had made it clear that she too would be acting on sufferance.
The same powerless flock the Church has ruthlessly carved up between those who may fully participate - heterosexual men in traditional marriages - and those who are within the Church on sufferance or under threat of explusion, which includes everyone else.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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