difference
The quality of being different.
Noun
- The quality of being different.
- You need to learn to be more tolerant of difference.
- A characteristic of something that makes it different from something else.
- There are three differences between these two pictures.
- But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives...
- A disagreement or argument.
- We have our little differences, but we are firm friends.
- What was the difference? It was a contention in public. - 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […]...
- Away therefore went I with the constable, leaving the old warden and the young constable to compose their difference as they could. - 1714, Thomas Ellwood, The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood: written by his own...
- Significant change in or effect on a situation or state.
- It just won't make much difference to me.
- It just won't make much of a difference to anyone.
- The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the...
- The result of a subtraction; sometimes the absolute value of this result.
- The difference between 3 and 21 is 18.
- Choice; preference.
- That now be chooseth with vile difference To be a beast, and lack intelligence. - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- An addition to a coat of arms to distinguish two people's bearings which would otherwise be the same. See augmentation and cadency.
- The quality or attribute which is added to those of the genus to constitute a species; a differentia.
- A Boolean operation which is true when the two input variables are different but is otherwise false; the XOR operation ( scriptstyle A◌̅B+◌̅AB).
- The set of elements that are in one set but not another ( scriptstyle A◌̅B).
Origin
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Indo-European *d(w)is- Proto-Italic *dis- Latin dis- Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- Proto-Indo-European *bʰéreti Proto-Italic *ferō Latin ferō Latin differō Latin differēns Proto-Indo-European *-yós Proto-Italic *-ios Old Latin -ios Latin -ius Latin -ia Latin differentiader. Old French differencebor. Middle English difference English difference From Middle English difference, from Old French difference, from Latin differentia (“difference”), from differēns (“different”), present participle of differre. Doublet of differentia. Morphologically differ + -ence.
Forms
Synonyms
departure deviation divergence disparity conflict difference of opinion dispute dissension remainder nevermind difference differentiation differentness distinction distinguishedness nonidentity unidenticality diversity
Antonyms
Hyponyms
Related
successor + = + +... = − = × = × ×... = ÷ = Or sometimes = √ = log(base) =
Derived
age difference antidifference as near as makes no difference common difference creative differences deflection difference diff difference engine difference equation difference gate difference-maker difference maker difference-making difference of opinion difference of two squares difference quotient difference set distinction without a difference electric potential difference equidifference finite difference goal difference know the difference between one's ass and a hole in the ground know the difference between one's ass and one's elbow
Verb
- To distinguish or differentiate.
- This simple spectation of the lungs is differenced from that which concomitates a pleurisy. - 1672, Gideon Harvey, Morbus Anglicus, Or, The Anatomy of Consumptions:
- […] and souls, like in the mass, but differenced in themselves, with special gifts, duties and joys […] - 1901 [1839], Philip James Bailey, Festus: A Poem, London: George Routledge & Sons, page 10:
- In the Calais Roll the arms of William de Warren […] are differenced by the addition of a canton said to be that of Fitzalan […] - 1904, Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, The Art of Heraldry: An Encyclopædia of Armory, London:...
- to modify a heraldic emblem so as to distinguish one branch of a house from another