benefaction

From Latin benefactiōnem, from benefacere (“to benefit”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /bɛnɪˈfakʃ(ə)n/

benefaction (countable and uncountable, plural benefactions)

1. An act of doing good; a benefit, a blessing.
   • 1999, Joyce Crick, translating Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Oxford 2008, p. 70:

     We all feel that sleep is a benefaction [transl. Wohlthat] to our psychical life, and the obscure awareness of the popular mind is clearly unwilling to be robbed of its prejudice that the dream is one of the ways in which sleep confers its benefactions.

2. An act of charity; almsgiving.