defer
/dɪˈfɝ/ verb C1- To delay or postpone. · We're going to defer the decision until we have all the facts.
- to postpone induction into military service.
- After winning the opening coin toss, to postpone until the start of the second half a team's choice of whether to kick off or receive (and to allow the opposing team to make this choice at the start of the first half).
- To delay, to wait.
He/she/it defers · Past deferred · Past participle deferred · -ing form deferring
Verb forms
- Base form
- defer
- He/she/it
- defers
- Past
- deferred
- Past participle
- deferred
- -ing form
- deferring
An irregular verb: learn its past and past participle by heart.
From the library
She couldn’t be left at Bright River anyhow, no matter what mistake had been made, so all questions and explanations might as well be deferred until he was safely back at Green Gables.
Compelled, as they were, to await a night sufficiently dark to favor their flight, they were obliged to defer their final attempt till that auspicious moment should arrive; their greatest dread now was lest the stone through which the sentry was doomed to fall should give way before its right time, and this they had in some measure provided against by propping it up with a small beam which they had discovered in the walls through which they had worked their way.
Dantès remained in his cell all day, not daring to return to his friend, thinking thus to defer the moment when he should be convinced, once for all, that the abbé was mad—such a conviction would be so terrible!
Bennet planned the courses that were to do credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all.
Other matches
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