appropriation

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

• noun The act of appropriating.
• noun Something appropriated, especially public funds set aside for a specific purpose.
• noun A legislative act authorizing the expenditure of a designated amount of public funds for a specific purpose.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of appropriating, setting apart, or assigning to a particular use or person in exclusion of all others; application to a special use or purpose; specifically, an act of a legislature authorizing money to be paid from the treasury for a special use.
• noun Anything appropriated or set apart for a special purpose, as money.
• noun . Acquisition; addition.
• noun In law: The annexing or setting apart of a benefice to the perpetual use of a spiritual corporation.
• noun The determining to which of several debts a sum of money paid shall be applied.

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

• noun The act of setting apart or assigning to a particular use or person, or of taking to one's self, in exclusion of all others; application to a special use or purpose, as of a piece of ground for a park, or of money to carry out some object.
• noun Anything, especially money, thus set apart.
• noun The severing or sequestering of a benefice to the perpetual use of a spiritual corporation. Blackstone.
• noun The application of payment of money by a debtor to his creditor, to one of several debts which are due from the former to the latter.

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

• noun An act or instance of appropriating
• noun That which is appropriated
• noun public funds set aside for a specific purpose
• noun art the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work
• noun sociology the assimilation of concepts into a governing framework

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

• noun money set aside (as by a legislature) for a specific purpose
• noun incorporation by joining or uniting
• noun a deliberate act of acquisition of something, often without the permission of the owner