distant
Contents
EnglishEdit
Alternative formsEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin distans, present participle of distare (“to stand apart, be separate, distant, or different”), from di-, dis- (“apart”) + stare (“to stand”).
PronunciationEdit
AdjectiveEdit
distant (comparative more distant, superlative most distant)
- Far off (physically, logically or mentally).
- 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:
- Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.
- We heard a distant rumbling but didn't pay any more attention to it. She was surprised to find that her fiancé was a distant relative of hers. His distant look showed that he was not listening to me.
- Emotionally unresponsive or unwilling to express genuine feelings.
- Ever since our argument, she has been totally distant toward me.
SynonymsEdit
- (far off): faraway; see also Thesaurus:distant
- (emotionally unresponsive): aloof, cold
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
far off
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emotionally unresponsive
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Further readingEdit
- distant in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
- distant in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
- distant at OneLook Dictionary Search
AnagramsEdit
CatalanEdit
FrenchEdit
AdjectiveEdit
distant (feminine singular distante, masculine plural distants, feminine plural distantes)
Further readingEdit
- “distant” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).