Word.ws English Dictionary

dependents

dependents is the plural of dependent.

Meaning of dependent

Noun

dependent (plural dependents)

  1. (US) A person who relies on another for support or sustenance, particularly financial support.
    • With two children and an ailing mother, she had three dependents in all.
  2. (US) An element in phrase or clause structure that is not the head. Includes complements, modifiers and determiners.
  3. (US) The aorist subjunctive or subjunctive perfective: a form of a verb not used independently but preceded by a particle to form the negative or a tense form. Found in Greek and in the Gaelic languages.
  4. (US) dependent (origination), in Buddhism, the idea that the existence of everything is conditional and dependent on a cause, and that nothing happens fortuitously or by chance.

See all 9 meanings of dependent

Questions about dependents

What is dependents the plural of?
Dependents is the plural of dependent.

Words near dependents in the dictionary

  1. dependent personality disordered
  2. dependent personality disorders
  3. dependent variable
  4. dependent variables
  5. dependently
  6. dependents
  7. depender
  8. dependers
  9. dependest
  10. dependeth
  11. dependible

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dependents (page history and authors); dependent (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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