allowance vs blackball

allowance

noun
  • Acknowledgment. 

  • Permission; granting, conceding, or admitting 

  • A permissible deviation in the fineness and weight of coins, owing to the difficulty in securing exact conformity to the standard prescribed by law. 

  • A planned deviation between an exact dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension. 

  • A child's allowance; pocket money. 

  • Abatement; deduction; the taking into account of mitigating circumstances 

  • An amount, portion, or share that is allotted or granted; a sum granted as a reimbursement, a bounty, or as appropriate for any purpose 

  • A permitted reduction in the weight that a racehorse must carry. 

  • A customary deduction from the gross weight of goods, differing by country. 

verb
  • To put upon a fixed allowance (especially of provisions and drink). 

  • To supply in a fixed and limited quantity. 

blackball

noun
  • A rejection; a vote against admitting someone. 

  • A black ball used to indicate such a negative vote. 

  • A kind of large black sweet; a niggerball. 

  • A game, a standardized version of the English version of eight-ball. 

  • A substance for blacking shoes, boots, etc. or for taking impressions of engraved work. 

verb
  • To ostracize. 

  • To vote against, especially in an exclusive organization. 

How often have the words allowance and blackball occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )