verb
definition
To tolerate, support, sanction, patronise or approve of something.
example
The cruel punishment was countenanced by the government, although it was not officially legal.
Examples of countenanced in a Sentence
You have never countenanced the evil doctrine of the brute coercion of the human will.
Alexander, who sided with his mother, withdrew, along with her, into Epirus, whence they both returned in the following year, after the assassination of Philip, which Olympias is' said to have countenanced.
The emperor Ferdinand II., too happy to transfer the burden, countenanced an arrangement by which Kepler entered the service of the duke of Friedland (Wallenstein), who assumed the full responsibility of the debt.
This reconciliation of the internal and the external evidence, countenanced as it is by Theophrastus, one of the best informed of the ancient historians, and approved by Zeller, one of the most learned of the modern critics, is more than plausible; but there is something to be said on the contrary part.
It met now and then, and directed sentiment, being twice dispersed by United States troops; but it passed no laws, and did nothing that conflicted with the Territorial government countenanced by Congress.
Mensurius had held moderate views as to the treatment of the traditores, and accordingly a strong fanatical party had formed itself in Carthage in opposition to him, headed by a wealthy and influential widow named Lucilla, and countenanced by Secundus of Tigisis, episcopus primae sedis in Numidia.
This systeir might probably have succeeded if the United States had nol countenanced the sending of supplies of every kind to the rebels, and if American diplomacy had not again and again made representations against Weylers ruthless policy.
In frequenting the salons of her friends the queen not only came in contact with a number of the younger and more dissipated courtiers, whose high play and unseemly amusements she countenanced, but she fell under the influence of various ambitious intriguers, such as the baron de Besenval, the comte de Vaudreuil, the duc de Lauzun and the comte d'Adhemar, whose interested manoeuvres she was induced to further by her affection for her favourites.
The inroad of Bruce had been countenanced by the native Irish ecclesiastics, whose sentiments were recorded in a statement addressed to Pope John XXII.
During the early centuries of our era, whilst Buddhism, where countenanced by the political rulers, was still holding its own by the side of Brahmanism, sectarian belief in the Hindu gods seems to have made steady progress.
Longimanus, the son and successor of Xerxes, though countenanced by Josephus, deserves little consideration.
What opinion should be held regarding this modern view as to equality in taxation, which differs so widely from anything countenanced by Adam Smith, though his language is echoed in it?
It is not to be supposed that either Amos or Isaiah would have countenanced the total suppression of all sacrificial observance.
Never would Ignatius have countenanced so perverted an idea as that the end justified the means, for with his spiritual light and zeal for God's glory he saw clearly that means in themselves unjust were opposed to the very end he held in view.
Garrison countenanced the activity of women in the cause, even to the extent of allowing them to vote and speak in the anti-slavery societies, and appointing them as lecturing agents; moreover, he believed in the political equality of the sexes, to which a strong party was opposed upon social and religious grounds.
The opinion that Lake Aral periodically disappeared, which was for a long time countenanced by Western geographers, loses more and more probability now that it is evident that at a relatively recent period the Caspian Sea extended much farther eastward than it does now, and that Lake Aral communicated with it through the Sary-kamysh depression.