insurance

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act, business, or system of insuring.
• noun The state of being insured.
• noun A means of being insured.
• noun An arrangement or agreement that protects someone from incurring future losses, as from damage, theft, illness, or death, especially a contract that transfers the risk of a specified loss to another party in exchange for the payment of a premium.
• noun The sum or rate for which such a contract insures something.
• noun The periodic premium paid for this coverage.
• noun A protective measure.
• adjective Being a point or score that increases one competitor's lead enough to prevent the opponent from achieving a tie with one more score.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of insuring or assuring against loss; a system of business by which a company or corporation (called an insurance company, or, rarely, assurance company or society) guarantees the insured to a specified extent and under stipulated conditions against pecuniary loss arising from such contingencies as loss of or damage to property by fire or the efforts to extinguish fire (fire-insurance), or by shipwreck or disaster at sea (marine insurance), or by explosion, breakage, or other accidents to property, or the loss of future earnings, either through disablement (accident-insurance) or through death (life-insurance), etc. Also called assurance.
• noun Specifically In law, a contract by which one party, for an agreed consideration (which is proportioned to the risk involved), undertakes to compensate the other for loss on a specified thing, from specified causes.
• noun The premium paid for insuring property, life, etc.
• noun Engagement; betrothal.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of insuring, or assuring, against loss or damage by a contingent event; a contract whereby, for a stipulated consideration, called premium, one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by certain specified risks. Cf. Assurance, n., 6.
• noun The premium paid for insuring property or life.
• noun The sum for which life or property is insured.
• noun obsolete A guaranty, security, or pledge; assurance.
• noun Any means of assuring against loss; a precaution.
• noun insurance against pecuniary loss by reason of accident to the person.
• noun a combination of life insurance and investment such that if the person upon whose life a risk is taken dies before a certain specified time the insurance becomes due at once, and if he survives, it becomes due at the time specified. Also called whole life insurance.
• noun See under Fire.
• noun a broker or agent who effects insurance.
• noun a company or corporation whose business it is to insure against loss, damage, or death.
• noun a certificate of insurance; the document containing the contract made by an insurance company with a person whose property or life is insured.
• noun See under Life.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A means of indemnity against a future occurrence of an uncertain event.
• noun The business of providing insurance.
• noun Metaphoric: Any attempt to anticipate an unfavorable event.
• noun Blackjack: A bet made after the deal, which pays off if the dealer has blackjack.
• noun countable An insurance policy

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun written contract or certificate of insurance
• noun protection against future loss
• noun promise of reimbursement in the case of loss; paid to people or companies so concerned about hazards that they have made prepayments to an insurance company