Distant

//ˈdɪstənt// adj

adj ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Far off (physically, logically or mentally).

    "We heard a distant rumbling but didn't pay any more attention to it. She was surprised to find that her fiancé was a distant relative of hers. His distant look showed that he was not listening to me."

  2. 2
    Emotionally unresponsive or unwilling to express genuine feelings.

    "Ever since our argument, she has been totally distant toward me."

  3. 3
    Imported into a cable television system from a different market (and thus possibly incurring a copyright royalty). not-comparable

    "Any determination that a particular television signal is "distant" must, of course, be made with respect to its proximity to a specific local area, which we have termed the CATV community, […]"

Adjective
  1. 1
    located far away spatially wordnet
  2. 2
    separate or apart in time wordnet
  3. 3
    separated in space or coming from or going to a distance wordnet
  4. 4
    far apart in relevance or relationship or kinship wordnet
  5. 5
    remote in manner wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
alooffarfarawayremovedfarawayremote

Example

More examples

"We can see distant objects with a telescope."

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English distaunt, from Old French distant, from Latin distāns.

Related phrases

dim and distantdistant starlight problemsocially distantfar off

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.