difference
Pronunciation: /ˈdɪf.(ə.)ɹəns/
The English word “difference” has 12 meanings listed here.
noun
- The quality of being different.
- A characteristic of something that makes it different from something else.
- A disagreement or argument.
- Significant change in or effect on a situation or state.
- The result of a subtraction; sometimes the absolute value of this result.
- Choice; preference.
- 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).
verb
- To distinguish or differentiate.
- to modify a heraldic emblem so as to distinguish one branch of a house from another
Etymology
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.
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More English words
- diffeomorphically
- diffeomorphism
- diffeomorphometry
- differ
- difference engine
- difference equation
- difference gate
- difference maker
About this dictionary
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.