difference – English noun declension

English noun forms of difference

Noun: difference
Singulardifference
Pluraldifferences

Sample Sentences

  • You need to learn to be more tolerant of difference.
  • There are three differences between these two pictures.
  • But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short. [2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 11:]
  • We have our little differences, but we are firm friends.
  • What was the difference? It was a contention in public. [1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]:]
  • Away therefore went I with the constable, leaving the old warden and the young constable to compose their difference as they could. [1714, Thomas Ellwood, The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood: written by his own hand:]
  • It just won't make much difference to me.
  • It just won't make much of a difference to anyone.
  • The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and once more they began to see surfaces—meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous. [1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:]
  • As she did so Fanny put down her book , stood up and stretched her arms, and at once Jessamy noticed a difference. It was the same Fanny but not the Fanny who climbed trees and tore her frock playing in the garden. It was as though a young lady film had settled over her, neatening her unruly hair, which was tied back with a large black bow, and primly composing her small mouth. [1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 105:]
  • The difference between 3 and 21 is 18.
  • That now be chooseth with vile difference
  • To be a beast, and lack intelligence. [1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁
3. Proto-Indo-European *d(w)is-
4. Proto-Italic *dis-
5. Latin dis-
6. Proto-Indo-European *bʰer-
7. Proto-Indo-European *-eti
8. Proto-Indo-European *bʰéreti
9. Proto-Italic *ferō
10. Latin ferō
11. Latin differō
12. Latin differēns
13. Proto-Indo-European *-(i)yós
14. Proto-Italic *-ijos
15. Proto-Italic *-ios
16. Old Latin -ios
17. Latin -ius
18. Latin -ia
19. Latin differentiader.
20. Old French differencebor.
21. Middle English difference
22. English difference
23. From Middle English difference, from Old French difference, from Latin differentia (“difference”), from differēns (“different”), present participle of differre. Doublet of differentia. Morphologically differ + -ence. See: Middle English Nouns 'difference', Latin Nouns 'differentia'.

Verbs referencing "difference"

Finnish Nouns differenssi.