advance

an advance in health or knowledge

Could he ask the cashier privately for an advance? No, the cashier was no good, no damn good: he wouldn't give an advance.

an advance on the prime cost of goods

For, if it were of any use to recall matters of fact, what is more notorious, than that prince's applying himself first to the church of England? and upon their refusal to fall in with his measures, making the like advances to the dissenters of all kinds, who readily and almost universally complied with him