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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
defer
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
to
▪ I don't want to be positioned as some one who they have to defer to.
■ NOUN
decision
▪ He unsuccessfully proposed a decision be deferred to allow further consultation with the disabled.
tax
▪ Then he suggested maybe tax cuts could be deferred until a balanced budget could be agreed to.
■ VERB
decide
▪ Insiders may decide to defer public disclosure so that they may first build up a position in the relevant shares.
▪ For these reasons, the Council has decided to defer the matter for three years.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ College loan payments are deferred until students finish their degrees.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Eventually the committee agreed to defer a decision to see if the school could team up with neighbouring villages to boost numbers.
▪ For those voters' sakes, important decisions like this one should be deferred.
▪ He deferred admission to Stanford medical school and set about taking three seconds off his 200 time.
▪ He expected to die, but the expectation was always of something remote, deferred.
▪ Macmillan then deployed a favourite tactic: he deferred the final decision till a later meeting of the Cabinet.
▪ That, his day's toil having been deferred, he wanders through unfamiliar woods with unsure footsteps.
▪ The punishment was deferred until after her baby was born.
▪ With words he defers, with a football he crushes and wrecks.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Defer

Defer \De*fer"\, v. t. [F. d['e]f['e]rer to pay deference, to yield, to bring before a judge, fr. L. deferre to bring down; de- + ferre to bear. See Bear to support, and cf. Defer to delay, Delate.]

  1. To render or offer. [Obs.]

    Worship deferred to the Virgin.
    --Brevint.

  2. To lay before; to submit in a respectful manner; to refer; -- with to.

    Hereupon the commissioners . . . deferred the matter to the Earl of Northumberland.
    --Bacon.

Defer

Defer \De*fer"\, v. i. To put off; to delay to act; to wait.

Pius was able to defer and temporize at leisure.
--J. A. Symonds.

Defer

Defer \De*fer"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Deferred; p. pr. & vb. n. Deferring.] [OE. differren, F. diff['e]rer, fr. L. differre to delay, bear different ways; dis- + ferre to bear. See Bear to support, and cf. Differ, Defer to offer.] To put off; to postpone to a future time; to delay the execution of; to delay; to withhold.

Defer the spoil of the city until night.
--Shak.

God . . . will not long defer To vindicate the glory of his name.
--Milton.

Defer

Defer \De*fer"\, v. i. To yield deference to the wishes of another; to submit to the opinion of another, or to authority; -- with to.

The house, deferring to legal right, acquiesced.
--Bancroft.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
defer

"to delay," late 14c., differren, deferren, from Old French differer (14c.), from Latin differre "carry apart, scatter, disperse;" also "be different, differ;" also "defer, put off, postpone," (see differ). Etymologically identical with differ; the spelling and pronunciation differentiated from 15c., perhaps partly by association of this word with delay.

defer

"yield," mid-15c., from Middle French déférer (14c.) "to yield, comply," from Latin deferre "carry away, transfer, grant," from de- "down, away" (see de-) + ferre "carry" (see infer). Main modern sense is from meaning "refer (a matter) to someone," which also was in Latin.

Wiktionary
defer

Etymology 1 vb. (context transitive English) To delay or postpone; especially to postpone induction into military service. Etymology 2

vb. 1 (context legal English) To submit to the opinion or desire of another in respect to their judgment or authority. 2 to render, to offer

WordNet
defer
  1. v. hold back to a later time; "let's postpone the exam" [syn: postpone, prorogue, hold over, put over, table, shelve, set back, remit, put off]

  2. submit or yield to another's wish or opinion; "The government bowed to the military pressure" [syn: submit, bow, accede, give in]

  3. [also: deferring, deferred]

Wikipedia
Defer

Defer may refer to:

  • Defer Elementary School, a Michigan State Historic Sitee
  • Deference, the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the power of one's superior or superiors
  • Deferral, the delaying of the realization of an asset or liability until a future date

Usage examples of "defer".

Washington seldom asked Adams for views, but Jefferson, who in Europe had deferred repeatedly to Adams, asked for them not at all.

Yet as far as we can trust to the obscure chronology of that period, it appears that the operations of some foreign war deferred the Italian expedition till the ensuing spring.

Evan judiciously deferred to the elder, watching warily as Atholl scraped the bowl of his pipe and repacked it with tobacco.

But they were all deferring to Commander Blenheim, and though they were looking at Chen as if he were endlessly fascinating, they showed no intention of asking him any questions themselves.

Publius Cornelius Cossus, Caius Valerius Potitus, Quintus Quintius Cincinnatus, Numerius Fabius Vibulanus were military tribunes with consular power, would have brought with it two continual wars, had not the Veientian campaign been deferred by the religious scruples of the leaders, whose lands were destroyed, chiefly by the ruin of the country-seats, in consequence of the Tiber having overflowed its banks.

Vielam rules the others outside of the south and Brysta, but he defers to his brothers.

I cannot proceed without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that I defer them.

Still, Fassola may have only intended, and indeed probably did intend, that the shell of the building was completed by 1520, the figures and frescoes being deferred for want of funds, though the building was ready for occupation.

Servants of the house scurried in and out, deferring to Hesh and myself equally, as if we were not master and man, but two guests of similar rank.

The nation can only mask the crisis ideologically, displace it, and defer its power.

The Mediterraneans deferred to officers and sergeants, of course, but seemed to accept the mass of other ranks as just another batch of landlubber soldiers shipped aboard to do the fighting and, they hoped, the dying while they the sailors handled the ship.

Still, had it not been for their folly, in giving Hyder and the Nizam a reasonable excuse for entering upon hostilities, it might have been deferred until the Madras government was better prepared to meet the storm.

But since this sacrament is given only by bishops, who are not always present where priests are baptizing, it was necessary, as regards the common use, to defer the sacrament of Confirmation to other seasons also.

The sun had hardly risen to a level with the topmost wall of the Rameseum before messengers were sent out from the palace bearing the tidings that Nitocris the Queen had been stricken with a sudden malady, and that all festivities were to be deferred till the next day at the earliest.

Secondly, because Baptism takes away past, but not future, sins: wherefore the more it is deferred, the more sins it takes away.