Noun
Acceptance; reception; favorable reception or regard; state of being acceptable.
The meaning in which a word or expression is understood, or generally received; as, term is to be used according to its usual acceptation.
Source: Webster's dictionaryThe difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation. Charles Babbage
I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it. Georges Bataille
It has been said of compliments, that men are most flattered by having the merits attributed to them which they least possess; but as it is only by liars that such compliments can be proffered, so it is only with fools that they can find a favourable acceptation. Henry Taylor
In the present day, however, the province of Rhetoric, in the widest acceptation that would reckoned admissible, comprehends all "Composition in Prose;" in the narrowest sense, it would be limited to "Persuasive Speaking." Richard Whately
Manly energy ... is the proper rendering [for αρετην], and not virtue, at least in the present and ordinary acceptation of the word. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word. Novalis