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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

deter.

To prevent something from happening.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/dɪˈtɜː/Received-Pronunciation/dɪˈtɝ/General-American/dɪˈtɛr/Scotland/dɪˈtøː/New-Zealand
  1. To prevent something from happening.

    transitive
  2. To persuade someone not to do something; to discourage.

    transitive
    Their boss deterred them from both taking holidays at the same time, claiming he couldn't manage it all on his own.
  3. To distract someone from something.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Latin dēterreō (“deter, discourage”), from de (“from”) + terreō (“to frighten”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.