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''depend'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260817185222-00-⌔

depend - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

depend (third-person singular simple present depends, present participle depending, simple past and past participle depended)

  • (intransitive) To be contingent or conditioned; to have something as a necessary condition [withon or upon; or (obsolete) with of]
    • ✤ Synonyms: hinge on, ride, pivot
    • ✤ We would like to go skiing, but it depends on the amount of snow.
    • ✤ Gold don’t carry any curse with it. It all depends on whether or not the guy who finds it is the right guy. The way I see it, gold can be as much of a blessing as a curse1
    • ✤ There’s not much room for error in the unforgiving Arctic wilderness, where hunters’lives depend on skill, experience, and a buddy’s helping hand.2
  • (intransitive) To trust; to have confidence; to rely. [withon or upon (usually)]
    • ✤ we should all be able to depend on the word or assurance of our friends
    • ✤ we depend on the mailman to come at the usual time.
    • ✤ “It’s another wedding present, you may depend,” Dicky said—“a beastly surprise, I shouldn’t wonder.”3
  • (now literary, heraldry) To hang down; to be sustained by being fastened or attached to something above, especially in heraldry, where a badge, decoration, or element is suspended from another part of an achievement of arms.
    • ✤ The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.4
    • ✤ In the centre is an Imperial Crown, from which depend a Harp of gold and the Badge.5
    • ✤ Bronze chandeliers with many globes depended from the low, slightly vaulted ceiling, and the fresco paintings ran flat and dull all round the walls without windows, representing scenes of the chase and of outdoor revelry in medieval costumes.6
    • ✤ He had prepared a sort of collar of leather with many straps depending from it.7
    • ✤ Besides, if you worked up to be a cadet officer, you got to wear a Sam Browne belt, from which depended a nifty saber.8
    • 1988, Thomas Flanagan, novel: The Tenants of Time chapter 13:
      • ✤ At the wedding feast of Agnes and Bob, all was meant for the best, and there was grewat good humour, but there was also a stiffness, a constraint. It did not touch them: Agnes was radiant in a gown of white silksand laces which would not have disgraced the Castle itself, her fair hair bound and coiled after the fashion of that year, and wearing her father’s special gift to her, a necklace of interwoven gold and silver from which depended a fiery stone, intricately cut, and housed within elaborate gold, thin-hammered.
  • (archaic) To be pending; to be undetermined or undecided.
    • ✤ a cause depending in court
    • ✤ While the Bishops Affair was depending, the King sent orders […]9
    • ✤ In perjury, the capias, warrant, and affidavit, are good evidence that a cause was depending.10
    • ✤ “A Letter of the King sent to his Proctors at Rome, concerning a Case of his in the said Court depending.”11
  • (transitive) To cause to be contingent or dependent on; to set as a necessity.
    • ✤ There he wilted, obviously depending the disposal of his person and his plight on Bradly, and expecting that to be done at once, too.12

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English dependen, from Old French dependre, from Latin dependeō, from dē- + pendeō (“to be suspended, hang”). In this sense, displaced native Old English hangian (“to hang or depend”).

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /dɪˈpɛnd/
  • (General American) IPA: /dɪˈpɛnd/, /di-/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
    • (weak vowel merger) IPA: /dəˈpɛnd/
  • (Australia) IPA: /dɪˈpend/
  • (New Zealand) IPA: /dəˈpend/
  • Rhymes: -ɛnd

Printed 2026-08-17.

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Footnotes

  1. 1948, John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, spoken by Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart): ↩

  2. 1990 August, John Bockstoce, “Changing Images of the Northwest Passage”, in National Geographic, volume 178, number 2, page 18: ↩

  3. 1904, E[dith] Nesbit, “”, in New Treasure Seekers, London: Ernest Benn, →OCLC: ↩

  4. 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick: ↩

  5. 1893, John Edwin Cussen (1837–1899), Handbook of Heraldry ‎, 4th edition, London: Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly, via Internet Archive (UC Berkeley), page 247: ↩

  6. 1907, Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent: ↩

  7. 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC: ↩

  8. 1982, Paul Fussell, My War: ↩

  9. 1703, The History Of King William The Third. In III Parts: ↩

  10. 1836, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King’s Bench: ↩

  11. 1837, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, page 544: ↩

  12. 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 65: ↩