affordverb/əˈfoɹd/

• 1

  To incur, stand, or bear without serious detriment, as an act which might under other circumstances be injurious; (usually after an expression of ability, as could, able, difficult) to be able or rich enough; to spare.

  • I think we can afford the extra hour it will take.  We can only afford to buy a small car at the moment.
  • “[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?[…]”
• 2

  obsoleteTo offer, provide, or supply, as in selling, granting or expending, with profit, or without too great a loss.

  • Alfred affords his goods cheaper than Bantock.
• 3

  rareTo give forth; to supply, yield, or produce as the natural result, fruit, or issue.

  • Grapes afford wine.  Olives afford oil.  The earth affords fruit.  The sea affords an abundant supply of fish.
  • The percentage of nutritive elements contained in the parsnip is very small; so small, indeed, that one pound of parsnips affords hardly one fifth of an ounce of nitrogenous or muscle-forming material.
• 4

  To give, grant, or confer, with a remoter reference to its being the natural result; to provide; to furnish.

  • A good life affords consolation in old age.
  • One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.