Differentiate

How to spell differentiate

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce differentiate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does differentiate mean?

1. verbTo recognise or express what makes two or more things different from each other.
2. verbIn calculus, to calculate the derivative of a function with respect to a variable.

Differentiate in a sentence

• A good brand needs something to differentiate it from cheaper rivals.

• The exam asks students to differentiate the equation with respect to x.

• Young children struggle to differentiate between left and right.

• You can differentiate a polynomial term by term.

Where does differentiate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb differre, which meant 'to carry apart' or 'to set apart', formed from dis- 'apart' and ferre 'to carry'. From differre came the noun differentia, meaning 'a difference' or 'a distinguishing quality', and medieval Latin developed differentiare, 'to make different'. English picked up the verb in the early 1600s, first in the literal sense of marking one thing off from another, and the same Latin root gives us the everyday words 'differ', 'difference', and 'different'. The spelling trap lives in that long unstressed middle: 'differ' supplies the double f and the e, while '-enti-' before the '-ate' is what writers most often mangle. In the nineteenth century mathematicians borrowed the word for the calculus operation of finding a derivative, a sense still in heavy academic use today.

How the word is built

• differenti- (from Latin differentia: difference, distinction)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)