The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Compensation \Com`pen*sa"tion\, n. [L. compensatio a weighing, a
   balancing of accounts.]
   1. The act or principle of compensating. --Emerson.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. That which constitutes, or is regarded as, an equivalent;
      that which makes good the lack or variation of something
      else; that which compensates for loss or privation;
      amends; remuneration; recompense.
      [1913 Webster]

            The parliament which dissolved the monastic
            foundations . . . vouchsafed not a word toward
            securing the slightest compensation to the
            dispossessed owners.                  --Hallam.
      [1913 Webster]

            No pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them.
                                                  --Burke.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. (Law)
      (a) The extinction of debts of which two persons are
          reciprocally debtors by the credits of which they are
          reciprocally creditors; the payment of a debt by a
          credit of equal amount; a set-off. --Bouvier.
          --Wharton.
      (b) A recompense or reward for some loss or service.
      (c) An equivalent stipulated for in contracts for the sale
          of real estate, in which it is customary to provide
          that errors in description, etc., shall not avoid, but
          shall be the subject of compensation.
          [1913 Webster]

   Compensation balance, or Compensated balance, a kind of
      balance wheel for a timepiece. The rim is usually made of
      two different metals having different expansibility under
      changes of temperature, so arranged as to counteract each
      other and preserve uniformity of movement.

   Compensation pendulum. See Pendulum.

   Syn: Recompense; reward; indemnification; consideration;
        requital; satisfaction; set-off.
        [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

compensation
    n 1: something (such as money) given or received as payment or
         reparation (as for a service or loss or injury)
    2: (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that conceals your
       undesirable shortcomings by exaggerating desirable behaviors
    3: the act of compensating for service or loss or injury [syn:
       recompense, compensation]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

136 Moby Thesaurus words for "compensation":
   alienation, amends, atonement, autism, autistic thinking,
   avoidance mechanism, base pay, blame-shifting, blood money,
   comeuppance, composition, compromise, consideration, correction,
   damages, decompensation, defense mechanism, dereism,
   dereistic thinking, desert, deserts, dismissal wage, displacement,
   dissociation, earnings, emotional insulation, escalator clause,
   escalator plan, escape, escape into fantasy, escape mechanism,
   escapism, expiation, expiatory offering, fantasizing, fantasy,
   financial remuneration, fixing, flight, gross income,
   guaranteed annual wage, guerdon, hire, honorarium, income,
   indemnification, indemnity, isolation, just deserts, living wage,
   making amends, making good, making right, making up, meed, mending,
   minimum wage, negativism, net income, overcompensation, overhaul,
   overhauling, pay, pay and allowances, paying back, payment,
   payroll, peace offering, penal retribution, penalization, penalty,
   penance, piaculum, portal-to-portal pay, price, projection,
   propitiation, psychotaxis, punishment, purchasing power, quittance,
   rationalization, real wages, reclamation, recompense,
   rectification, redemption, redress, refund, reimbursement, remedy,
   remuneration, repair, repairing, reparation, repayment, reprisal,
   requital, requitement, resistance, restitution, retribution,
   return, revenge, reward, salary, salvage, satisfaction,
   severance pay, sliding scale, smart money,
   sociological adjustive reactions, solatium, squaring, sublimation,
   substitution, take-home, take-home pay, taxable income,
   total compensation, troubleshooting, wage, wage control,
   wage freeze, wage reduction, wage rollback, wage scale, wages,
   wages after deductions, wages after taxes, wergild, what is due,
   what is merited, wish-fulfillment fantasy, wishful thinking,
   withdrawal



Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

COMPENSATION, chancery practice. The performance of that which a court of
chancery orders to be done on relieving a party who has broken a condition,
which is to place the opposite party in no worse situation than if the
condition had not been broken.
     2. Courts of equity will not relieve from the consequences of a broken
condition, unless compensation can be made to the opposite party. Fonb. c.
6; s. 51 n. (k) Newl. Contr: 251, et. seq.
     3. When a simple mistake, not a fraud, affects a contract, but does not
change its essence, a court of equity will enforce it, upon making
compensation for the error, The principle upon which courts of equity act,"
says Lord Chancellor Eldon, "is by all the authorities brought to the true
standard, that though the party had not a title at law, because he had not
strictly complied with the terms so as to entitle him to an action, (as to
time for instance,) yet if the time, though introduced, as some time must be
fixed, where something is to be done on one side, as a consideration for
something to be done on the other, is not the essence of the contract; a
material object, to which they looked in the first conception of it, even
though the lapse of time has not arisen from accident, a court of equity
will compel the execution of the contract upon this ground, that one party
is ready to perform, and that the other ma, have performance in substance if
he will permit it." 13 Ves. 287. See 10 Ves. 505; 13 Ves. 73, 81, 426; 6
Ves. 675; 1 Cox, 59.



Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

COMPENSATION, crim. law; Compensatio criminura, or recrimination (q.v.)
     2. In cases of suits for divorce on the ground of adultery, a
compensation of the crime hinders its being granted; that is, if the
defendant proves that the party has also committed adultery, the defendant
is absolved as to the matters charged in the libel of the plaintiff. Ought.
tit. 214, Pl. 1; Clarke's Prax. tit. 115; Shelf. on Mar. & Div. 439; 1 Hagg.
Cons. R. 148. See Condonation; Divorce.



Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

COMPENSATION, remedies. The damages recovered for an injury, or the
violation of a contract.. See Damages.



Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

COMPENSATION, contracts. A reward for services rendered.



Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

COMPENSATION, contracts, civil law. When two persons are equally indebted to
each other, there takes place a compensation between them, which
extinguishes both debts. Compensation is, therefore, a reciprocal liberation
between two persons who are creditors and debtors to each other, which
liberation takes place instead of payment, and prevents a circuity. Or it
may be more briefly defined as follows; compensatio est debiti et crediti
intter se contributio.
     2. Compensation takes places, of course, by the mere operation of law,
even unknown to the debtors the two debts are reciprocally extinguished, as
soon as they exist simultaneously, to the, amount of their respective sums.
Compensation takes place only between two debts, having equally for their
object a sum of money, or a certain quantity of consumable things of one and
the same kind, and which are equally liquidated and demandable. Compensation
takes place, whatever be the cause of either of the debts, except in case,
1st. of a demand of restitution of a thing of which the owner has been
unjustly deprived; 2d. of a demand of restitution of a deposit and a loan
for use; 3d. of a debt which has for its cause, aliments declared not liable
to seizure. Civil Code of. Louis. 2203 to 2208. Compensation is of three
kinds: 1. legal or by operation of law; 2. compensation by way of exception;
and, 3. by reconvention. 8 L. R. 158; Dig. lib. 16, t. 2; Code, lib. 4, t.
31; Inst. lib. 4, t' 6, s. 30; Poth. Obl. partie. 3eme, ch. 4eme, n. 623;
Burge on Sur., Book 2, c. 6, p. 181.
     3. Compensation very nearly resembles the set-off (q.v.) of the common
law. The principal difference is this, that a set-off, to have any effect,
must be pleaded; whereas compensation is effectual without any such plea,
only the balance is a debt.  2 Bouv. Inst. n. 1407.