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depend

Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To rely, especially for support or maintenance.
  • intransitive verb To place trust or confidence: synonym: rely.
  • intransitive verb To be determined, influenced, or contingent.
  • intransitive verb To have a dependence.
  • intransitive verb Archaic To hang down.
  • intransitive verb To be determined by, be influenced by, or be contingent on.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To hang; be sustained by being fastened or attached to something above: used absolutely or followed by from.
  • To be a conditional effect or result; be contingent or conditioned.
  • To be in suspense; be undetermined: only in the present participle: as, the suit is still depending in court. See pending.
  • To rely; rest in full confidence or belief: with on or upon: as, you may depend upon the accuracy of the report.
  • To rely for that which is necessary or desired; rest conditionally or in subordination; be dependent: with on or upon: as, children depend upon their parents; to depend upon a foreign market for supplies; we depend on the newspapers for intelligence.
  • To rest in suspense; wait expectantly.
  • To hang in suspense over; impend.

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

  • intransitive verb To hang down; to be sustained by being fastened or attached to something above.
  • intransitive verb To hang in suspense; to be pending; to be undetermined or undecided.
  • intransitive verb To rely for support; to be conditioned or contingent; to be connected with anything, as a cause of existence, or as a necessary condition; -- followed by on or upon, formerly by of.
  • intransitive verb To trust; to rest with confidence; to rely; to confide; to be certain; -- with on or upon
  • intransitive verb obsolete To serve; to attend; to act as a dependent or retainer.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To impend.

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

  • verb now literary To hang down; to be sustained by being fastened or attached to something above.
  • verb To hang in suspense; to be pending; to be undetermined or undecided; as, a cause depending in court.
  • verb To rely on for support; to be conditioned or contingent; to be connected with anything, as a cause of existence, or as a necessary condition; — followed by on or upon, formerly by of.
  • verb To trust; to rest with confidence; to rely; to confide; to be certain; — with on or upon; as, we depend on the word or assurance of our friends; we depend on the mail at the usual hour.
  • verb To serve; to attend; to act as a dependent or retainer.

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

  • verb have faith or confidence in
  • verb be contingent upon (something that is elided)

Etymologies

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

[Middle English dependen, to hang down, from Old French dependre, from Latin dēpendēre : dē-, de- + pendēre, to hang; see (s)pen- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French dependre, from de- + pendre ("to hang").

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Examples

  • For there are various ways in which one being may be said to depend upon one or more other beings, in a sense of ˜depend™ that is distinctly metaphysical in character and that may be contrasted, thus, with various causal senses of this word.

    Ontological Dependence Lowe, E. Jonathan 2009

  • Currently tied at the top with Penn, the Crimson's hopes for a title depend on a victory this weekend.

    The Harvard Crimson :: News 2009

  • ↑ The existence of words like appendix and pending in English does not mean that the English word depend is analyzed into a derivational prefix de - and a root pend.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

  • Our electrical infrastructure upon which our lives depend is worth trillions.

    Wonk Room » Gingrich Pushes Suspense Thriller-Based Foreign Policy 2009

  • While they still impact each other and over the medium-term depend on each other, the shorter-term cause-and-effect relationships are not as strong as elsewhere.

    Making Sense of Japanese Cycles Takuji Aida 2011

  • The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

    Eco-Justice 2009

  • Equity Red Star says these are not courtesy cars but loan cars because they are lent to you while your own car is being repaired, although the terms depend on which level of insurance you chose.

    Equity Red Star steers around courtesy car insurance mix-up 2010

  • The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.

    Al Gore - Nobel Lecture 2007

  • Further gains in the short-term depend on a synchronized global economic recovery.

    No Cooling Is In Sight For Metals 2009

  • For the industries that harvest seafood, and the human societies that are obliged to manage these public resources, the implication of these results is one that has not yet been widely integrated into fishery management, namely that productive fisheries that are sustainable over the long term depend on a normally functioning ocean ecosystem.

    Marine biodiversity and food security 2008

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