Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To prevent or discourage from acting, as by means of fear or doubt.
  • transitive verb To prevent or discourage (an action or behavior).
  • transitive verb To make less likely or prevent from happening.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To discourage and stop by fear; hence, to stop or prevent from acting or proceeding by any countervailing motive: as, we are often deterred from our duty by trivial difficulties; the state of the road or a cloudy sky may deter a man from undertaking a journey.
  • Synonyms To hinder, restrain, keep back.

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

  • transitive verb To prevent by fear; hence, to hinder or prevent from action by fear of consequences, or difficulty, risk, etc.

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

  • verb transitive To prevent something from happening.
  • verb transitive To persuade someone not to do something; to discourage.

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

  • verb turn away from by persuasion
  • verb try to prevent; show opposition to

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin dēterrēre : dē-, de- + terrēre, to frighten.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin dēterreō ("deter, discourage"), from de ("from") + terreō ("I frighten").

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Examples

Comments

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  • God usually doesn’t show us where He is taking us. He just asks us to trust Him. It’s like driving a car at night. Our headlights never shine all the way to our destination; they illuminate only about 50 meters ahead. But that doesn’t deter us from moving forward.

    January 17, 2011