Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Showing deference; deferential.
- adj. Anatomy Carrying down or away. Used of a duct or vessel.
- adj. Serving or adapted to carry or transport.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Bearing off or away; carrying off; conveying away; specifically, in anatomy and physiology, efferent: opposed to afferent: as, the deferent duct of the testes.
- n. That which carries or conveys; a conductor.
- n. Specifically A vessel or duct in the human body for the conveyance of fluids.
- n. (also called the orbit), in the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, a circle upon the circumference of which another circle was supposed to move, this second circle being called the epicycle, and carrying the body of the planet.
- n. In mathematics, the locus of the centers of circles of which a bicircular quartic is drawn as the envelop.
Wiktionary
- adj. Showing deference.
- n. obsolete That which carries or conveys.
- n. obsolete An imaginary circle surrounding the Earth, in whose periphery either the heavenly body or the centre of the heavenly body's epicycle was supposed to be carried round.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. rare Serving to carry; bearing.
- n. That which carries or conveys.
- n. (Ptolemaic Astron.) An imaginary circle surrounding the earth, in whose periphery either the heavenly body or the center of the heavenly body's epicycle was supposed to be carried round.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. showing deference
Etymologies
- Latin dēferēns, dēferentis. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English defferent, from Latin dēferēns, dēferent-, present participle of dēferre, to carry away; see defer2. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Whatever it is, it’s recognizable by many in deferent ways that keeps them coming.”
“It must be remembered that the apparent planetary motions are epicyclical, each planet revolving in its own orbit, the epicycle, around the sun, and with the sun, as centre of the epicycle, apparently around the earth in a common orbit, which is called the deferent orbit.”
“Meanwhile, Francine, the family's long-serving and eager-to-leave maid, finds her polite and deferent veneer punctured at the end of a lengthy and explosive conflict in which her husband Albert tries to intervene physically.”
The Huffington Post: Jeff Kelly Lowenstein: Clybourne Park Explores Other Side of Raisin in the Sun
“LOL not much combat going on in 73. well overt combat,,, i know covert a deferent story.”
“I heard a deferent reason as well to the banning of pork.”
Think Progress » Maryland Foster Agency Won’t Allow Muslim Mother To Foster A Child
“As I bent down it was like looking into a deferent dimension.”
“I have bowhunted for over 25 years and have shot owned several deferent brands.”
“The deferent Japanese waiters stay back in the shadows; this is our ritual, after all.”
“People are grouchy because Mr Obama has sold himself as something deferent and has shown himself to e a typical politician.”
“Obviously you and I are using deferent definitions of common sense.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘deferent’.
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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