deference
UK/ˈdɛfəɹəns//ˈdɛ.fɚ.əns/
deference noun: great respect.
Noun
deference (countable and uncountable, plural deferences)
- Great respect.
- The children treated their elders with deference.
- The willingness to carry out the wishes of others.
- By tidying his room, he showed deference to his mother.
- Michael in turn benefits from Tom. He loosens up a bit, stops talking so much like one of the bad novels he used to read, and learns to give his intellect a rest once in a while in deference to the emotions.1983 December 31, Kenneth Hale-Wehmann, “The Business of Sex and Affection”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 24, page 8
deference meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
deference in Tamil
- பணிவிணக்கம், மதிப்பளி, பணிவிசைவு, விட்டுக் கொடுத்தல்
deference in Urdu
- deference, reverence, homage
- آدر ādar
deference in Bengali
- deference
- অপেক্ষা opekkha
deference in Malayalam
- ഇതരാഭിപ്രായത്തിനു വഴങ്ങൽ, അനുവർത്തനം, ആദരവ്
More languagesFewer languages
- deference in Kannada
- ಮಣಿತ, ತಕ್ಕಮೆ, ಮನ್ನಣೆ
- deference in Tagalog
- pagiging masunurin
- deference in Thai
- ความเคารพ kwaam-kao-róp
Examples of deference in a sentence
- Monarchists, and historians paying deference to monarchy, call them ‘king-counts’; Catalans and Catalanophiles call them ‘count-kings’.
- Matt and Bernie had the lower bunks and the Indian the upper: a deference to their Caucasianness.
- Back then, Annibale spoke of the tenants with deference.
Synonyms of deference
Forms of deference
| plural | deferences |
|---|
Origin of deference
From French déférence. Morphologically defer + -ence.
Words formed from deference
Words that rhyme with deference
Questions about deference
- What does deference mean?
- Deference means great respect.
- What is deference in Tamil?
- Deference in Tamil is பணிவிணக்கம், மதிப்பளி, பணிவிசைவு. See Deference meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is deference?
- Deference is a noun.
- How do you pronounce deference?
- Deference is pronounced /ˈdɛfəɹəns/ (UK).
- What is the plural of deference?
- The plural of deference is deferences.
Words near deference in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: deference (page history and authors); deference (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); آدر (Urdu) (page history and authors); অপেক্ষা (Bengali) (page history and authors); deference (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); deference (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-deference.ogg.
Cite this entry: “deference.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deference. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.