Defer
verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To delay or postpone. transitive
"We're going to defer the decision until we have all the facts."
- 2 To submit to the opinion or desire of others in respect to their judgment or authority. ambitransitive
"Hereupon the commissioners […] deferred the matter to the Earl of Northumberland."
- 3 yield to another's wish or opinion wordnet
- 4 To delay or postpone.; to postpone induction into military service. common, especially, transitive
- 5 To render, to offer.
"worship deferred to the Virgin"
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- 6 hold back to a later time wordnet
- 7 After winning the opening coin toss, to postpone until the start of the second half a team's choice of whether to kick off or receive (and to allow the opposing team to make this choice at the start of the first half).
- 8 To delay, to wait. intransitive
"God […] will not long defer / To vindicate the glory of his name"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Suppose then that we defer the marriage till the autumn."
Etymology
Originally a variant of (and hence a doublet of) differ; from Middle English differren (“to postpone”), from Old French differer, from Latin differō. Doublet of differ and dilate. See also infer, collate and confer, delate and defer, relate and refer as well as prelate and prefer among others.
From late Middle English differren (“to refer for judgement”), from Middle French déférer, from Latin dēferō. Doublet of delate. See also infer, collate and confer, relate and refer, as well as prelate and prefer among others.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.