Defer

How to spell defer

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce defer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does defer mean?

1. verbTo put something off until a later time; to postpone.
2. verbTo submit to or accept another person's opinion, judgement, or authority.

Defer in a sentence

• The bank agreed to defer the first loan repayment for three months.

• On technical matters the manager tends to defer to the engineers.

• We decided to defer the kitchen renovation until after the holidays.

• The new councillor was happy to defer to her more experienced colleagues.

Where does defer come from?

Language of origin: Latin

English actually merged two related Latin verbs under one spelling. The 'postpone' sense descends from Latin differre, a compound of dis- 'apart' and ferre 'to carry or bear', so its literal idea was to carry something apart in time, that is, to put it off. The 'yield to someone' sense comes instead from Latin deferre, built from de- 'down' and the same ferre, meaning to carry down or bring before someone, which softened into the idea of submitting your view to another's authority. Both arrived in English through Old French during the 1300s and 1400s and ended up looking identical, which is why a single spelling now covers two distinct meanings. The shared root ferre 'to carry' is the same element hidden inside 'transfer', 'refer', 'infer' and 'offer', a family worth remembering because all of them keep that single -fer ending. The spelling trap is purely about the stress falling on the second syllable, so the unstressed 'de-' must not be doubled or misheard, and the single 'r' is preserved until a suffix forces the doubling in 'deferred' and 'deferring'.

How the word is built

• de- (from, down, away)
• fer (Latin ferre: to carry, bear)