Word.ws English Dictionary

dep

dep is the clipping of department.

dep is the clipping of deposit.

dep is the clipping of departure.

Noun (1)

dep (countable and uncountable, plural deps)

  1. (informal) A deposition.
    • Don't worry too much if they don’t give us everything we need in their rog answers; we'll fill the gaps in dep.
  2. (informal) A deputy.
    • [A]s soon as the door opened we could see it was the deputy governor coming through. […] We watched as the dep crossed the football field towards us.1999, Alex Alexandrowicz, David Wilson, The Longest Injustice: The Strange Story of Alex Alexandrowicz
  3. (Canada, Quebec, informal) A dépanneur.
  4. (informal) A dependency.

Verb (2)

dep

  1. depart or departs
  2. deposed

Meaning of department

Noun

department (plural departments)

  1. A part, portion, or subdivision.
  2. A distinct course of life, action, study, or the like.
    • Technical things are not his department; he's a people person.
    Synonyms:
    province, specialty
  3. A specified aspect or quality.
    • The 2012 Boston Marathon was outstanding in the temperature department; runners endured temperatures of no less than 88 degrees Fahrenheit.
  4. (often in proper names) One of the principal divisions of executive government
    • the Treasury Department; the Department of Agriculture; police department
    Synonyms:
    ministry
  5. One of the divisions of instructions
    • the physics department; the history department; the math department
  6. A territorial division; a district; especially, in France, one of the districts into which the country is divided for governmental purposes, similar to a county in the UK and in the USA. France is composed of 101 départements organized in 18 régions, each department is divided into arrondissements, in turn divided into cantons.
    • The departments were the bricks from which the edifice of the nation was to be constructed.2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to the 1715-99, Penguin, published 2003, page 427

See all 8 meanings of department

Meaning of deposit

Noun

deposit (plural deposits)

  1. Sediment or rock that is not native to its present location or is different from the surrounding material. Sometimes refers to ore or gems.
    • Newly discovered oil and gas deposits at Nan-ch'ung in Szechwan also promise to be of increasing importance.1963, Yuan-li Wu, “The Infant Petroleum Industry”, in Economic Development and the Use of Energy Resources in Communist China, Frederick A. Praeger, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 178
  2. Bailment of personal property to be kept gratuitously for the bailor (depositor) and without any benefit to the bailee (depositary), e.g. for storage, carriage, repair, etc.
  3. Money placed in a bank account, as for safekeeping or to earn interest.
    • make a deposit (put money in an account)
  4. Anything left behind on a surface.
    • a mineral deposit
  5. A sum of money or other asset given as an initial payment, to show good faith, or to reserve something for purchase.
    • They put down a deposit on the apartment.
  6. A sum of money given as a security for a borrowed item, which will be given back when the item is returned, e.g., a bottle deposit or can deposit

See all 12 meanings of deposit

Verb (1)

dep (third-person singular simple present deps, present participle depping, simple past and past participle depped)

  1. (informal) To deputize.
    • Regularly with Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band for almost a year in the late 1990s and later deputized in the band, including a tour of Denmark (2003), also depped in Chris Barber's Band for Swedish tour (2001).2004, John Chilton, Who's Who of British Jazz: 2nd Edition, page 212

Noun (2) capitalized: DEP

DEP (countable and uncountable, plural DEPs)

  1. (US, abbreviation, countable, initialism) Initialism of delayed entry program.
    • A DEP allows a recruit to complete education before joining the military.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism, uncountable) Initialism of data execution prevention.

Proper noun capitalized: DEP

DEP

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Department of Environmental protection.

Forms of dep

Noun
pluraldeps
alternative formdep.
alternative formdép
alternative formdép.
pluralDEPs
Verb
third-person singular presentdeps
present participledepping
past participledepped
pastdepped

Origin of dep

Clipping of department, originally slang from Imperial College, first attested c. 1930.

*Abbreviation of several English terms that begin with "dep" *Clipping of several English terms that begin with "dep"

Questions about dep

What does dep mean?
Dep means a deposition.
What is dep the clipping of?
Dep is the clipping of department.
What part of speech is dep?
Dep can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
What is the plural of dep?
The plural of dep is deps.

Words near dep in the dictionary

  1. deozonization
  2. deozonize
  3. deozonized
  4. deozonizes
  5. deozonizing
  6. dep
  7. Dep't
  8. dep.
  9. depack
  10. depackage
  11. depackaged

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dep (page history and authors); DEP (page history and authors); department (page history and authors); deposit (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “dep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.