Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Bearing off or away; carrying off; conveying away; specifically, in anatomy and physiology, efferent: opposed to afferent: as, the deferent duct of the testes.
  • noun That which carries or conveys; a conductor.
  • noun Specifically A vessel or duct in the human body for the conveyance of fluids.
  • noun (also called the orbit), in the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, a circle upon the circumference of which another circle was supposed to move, this second circle being called the epicycle, and carrying the body of the planet.
  • noun In mathematics, the locus of the centers of circles of which a bicircular quartic is drawn as the envelop.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun That which carries or conveys.
  • noun (Ptolemaic Astron.) An imaginary circle surrounding the earth, in whose periphery either the heavenly body or the center of the heavenly body's epicycle was supposed to be carried round.
  • adjective rare Serving to carry; bearing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Showing deference.
  • noun obsolete That which carries or conveys.
  • noun obsolete An imaginary circle surrounding the Earth, in whose periphery either the heavenly body or the centre of the heavenly body's epicycle was supposed to be carried round.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective showing deference

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin dēferēns, dēferentis.

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