From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishendowmenten‧dow‧ment /ɪnˈdaʊmənt/ noun 1 [countable, uncountable]SCL a sum of money given to a college, hospital etc to provide it with an income, or the act of giving this money2 [countable]CHARACTER OF something a natural quality or ability that someone has
Examples from the Corpus
endowment• He left money for the poor and the sick, and an endowment of £20 a year for Bridgnorth School.• A Taking out an endowment on a joint mortgage can be done in one of two ways.• In particular, we will relate the share of intraindustry trade to cross-country differences in relative factor endowments and relative country size.• This will presumably happen if countries are sufficiently similar in relative factor endowments and if economies of scale are sufficiently important.• In between these extremes the intraindustry share is increasing in similarity of relative factor endowments, and it depends on country size.• The state of California includes among its natural endowments an unusual variety of valuable marine mammals.• the island's natural endowments of white sandy beaches and clean water• It came with no endowment to meet the cost of conversion. 