allowance vs maintenance

allowance

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

  • 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. 

  • Acknowledgment. 

  • A child's allowance; pocket money. 

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

  • 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. 

maintenance

noun
  • Money required or spent to provide for the needs of a person or a family. 

  • The natural process which keeps an organism alive. 

  • Child support. 

  • Actions performed to keep some machine or system functioning or in service. 

  • A tort and (in some jurisdictions) an offence committed when a third party who does not have a bona fide interest in a lawsuit provides help or acquires an interest to a litigant's lawsuit. 

  • Alimony, a periodical payment or a lump sum made or ordered to be made to a spouse after a divorce. 

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