Definition of "earmark"

earmark

verb
third-person singular simple present earmarks, present participle earmarking, simple past and past participle earmarked
1. (transitive) To mark (sheep or other animals) by slitting the ear.
2. (transitive, by extension) To specify or set aside for a particular purpose, to allocate.
  Quotations
  Now that police departments were suddenly flush with cash and military equipment earmarked for the drug war, they needed to make use of their new resources.
  2012, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, page 74
  A widening of the M4 had long been mooted, and the Welsh Government had even earmarked most of the required £1.6bn funding for a new 14-mile, six-lane section around Newport. Then, in the face of opposition from environmentalists, came a realisation that similar road schemes across the world tend merely to encourage greater car use and therefore soon prove ineffective in solving the original problem.
  2020 December 2, Christian Wolmar, “Wales offers us a glimpse of an integrated transport policy”, in Rail, page 56
  1. (transitive, finance, UK) To designate part of a pension to be payable to the holder's former spouse or partner at its time of payment.
noun
plural earmarks
1. A mark or deformation of the ear of an animal, intended to indicate ownership.
2. (US, politics) The designation of specific projects in appropriations of funding for general programs.
3. A mark for identification; a distinguishing mark.
  Quotations
  Money has no earmark.
  1860, John Wharton, The Law Lexicon
  I saw in my patient one of the most forbidding men I have ever met. He had all the earmarks of a criminal.
  1959, Brunettie Burrow, Angels in White