Reader question:
In this sentence – You've got to make allowances for their British accents – what does "make allowances" mean?
My comments:
It means you've got to tolerate their British accents – sounds like some American talking.
When one makes allowances for someone or something, one takes into consideration things that they normally ignore. For instance, one audio version of the Harry Potter books is read by Stephen Fry, a British comedian, actor and writer. He's brilliant but if you're, say, American, you have to make allowances for his British accent – got to get used to a bit of Fry – before you can fully enjoy it.
People make all kinds of allowances every day. If, say, you've got an appointment this evening with a friend at the other part of town, you've got to make allowances for Beijing's notorious rush hour traffic – that is, if it normally takes you 45 minutes to get there, you may want to leave a full hour in advance this time just to be on the safe side.
Mark Twain even made allowances for kings. "All I say is," Twain wrote in Huckleberry Finn, "kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised."
And Rudyard Kipling advised us to make allowances for practically everything in his poem If:
If you can keep your head when all about you
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