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sanction

/ˈsæŋkʃən//ˈsæŋkʃən/·noun & verb
official approval to act — or a penalty for breaking a rule
Fig. 1 — A great marble hand is held out over the packed arena, and I watch the whole crowd fall silent under it, every eye on which way the thumb will turn.
01Definition

Sanction is a famously two-faced word: it can mean official permission to do something, or an official penalty for doing something wrong. Both senses come from Latin sancire, 'to make binding', and that is the thread — an authority makes its will binding, whether by approving an act or by punishing one. As a verb it usually means to approve ('the board sanctioned the plan'); as a plural noun it usually means penalties ('trade sanctions'). Context, and grammatical number, tell you which face you are seeing.

02In use
  • iOnce the committee sanctions the budget, the project can finally begin.
  • iiThe new measures are designed to deter the regime and will not be lifted easily.
  • iiiInternational sanctions restrict what the country is allowed to buy and sell abroad.
03Collocations
  • impose sanctions
  • economic sanctions
  • lift sanctions
  • officially sanction
  • sanction a plan

Family sanctioned (adjective) · sanctioning (adjective)

04Relations

=approve, authorize, endorse, penalty, embargo

≠ban, prohibit, veto

06TOEFL & IELTS

A genuine contronym and a favourite trap: the verb tends to mean 'approve', while the plural noun 'sanctions' almost always means 'penalties'. Learn it through collocations — impose / lift / tighten sanctions for the penalty sense, 'officially sanction' for the approval sense. Very common in IELTS reading on international relations and law; let the surrounding words disambiguate it.

07Asked
Why does sanction mean both approve and punish?
Because both senses grew from one idea: an authority making its will binding. Latin sanctio meant a binding decree; the penalty for breaking the decree came to be called a sanction too, and eventually so did the approval behind it. Linguists call such self-opposites contronyms, or Janus words — and the 'penalize' use of the verb is first recorded only in the 1950s.
How can I tell which meaning of sanction is intended?
Read the grammar and the setting. A plural noun in a news story (sanctions against the regime) is nearly always penalties. A singular noun in legal or formal prose (with the sanction of the court) is usually permission. The verb leans toward approval — unless its object is a person, as in 'the player was sanctioned', where it means punished.
What are economic sanctions?
Economic sanctions are penalties that cut a country, company, or person off from normal trade and finance — export bans, frozen assets, blocked investment, travel restrictions. They are imposed, tightened, and lifted (those are the verbs English pairs them with) to pressure a government without military force.
Do sanctions actually work?
The research is mixed: some studies of past cases suggest sanctions produce meaningful policy change in well under half of them, and that they bite hardest when many countries impose them together. For an essay, the safe claim is that their effectiveness is contested — which is exactly why they remain a favourite debate topic.
What does it mean when a race or tournament is sanctioned?
A sanctioned event is an approved one: a governing body has licensed it, so its rules, safety standards, and results officially count. This is the permission sense of sanction alive in everyday English — the very opposite of the punishment sense that dominates the news.
What does it mean for a person or company to be sanctioned?
It means they have been placed on an official penalty list: banks must freeze their assets, and doing business with them becomes illegal for the sanctioning country's citizens. Compliance teams screen customers against these lists — which is why 'sanctioned entity' appears so often in finance.
Is sanction positive or negative?
The word itself is neutral — what it always carries is authority. Whether that authority smiles or strikes depends on the sense in play: to sanction a plan is to bless it; to sanction a state is to punish it. In the scene above, it is the same marble hand either way.