DictionaryAI

depend

verb
di-PEND/dɪˈpɛnd/

Formsdepends, depending, depended

5 meanings of depend

Practice

  1. 1
    hinge onverbintransitive
    To be determined or conditioned by something else, which serves as a necessary condition for it.

    Outcomes like these depend on factors no one can fully control.

    How quickly the wound heals depends on the patient's overall health.

    UsageDepend on or, more formally, upon (not incorrect: depend of); It depends can stand alone as an answer.

    Similarride, pivot

    Note

    Contingency pictured as hanging: the word comes through Old French and Latin from dē- + pendeō, "to hang," and the literal "hang down" sense still survives beside it. A result hangs on its condition, much as hinge on and pivot suggest. Dobbs in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) uses the everyday frame: "It all depends on whether…"

  2. 2
    trustverbintransitive
    To place trust or confidence in someone or something, relying on them for support or help.

    The team depends on its captain to make the tough calls.

    We depend on each other during the busy season.

    UsageDepend on someone for something or to do something: depend on parents for food.

    Similarrely, count, lean, bank

    Note

    Edith Nesbit's The New Treasure Seekers (1904) shows a use with no object at all, "It's another wedding present, you may depend," where you may depend means "you can be sure." When the object is a person or a promise, the verb means reliance; when it is a circumstance, it slides toward the "be contingent" meaning.

  3. 3
    verbtransitive
    To make one thing contingent on another, setting the second as a necessary condition.
    There he wilted, obviously depending the disposal of his person and his plight on Bradly, and expecting that to be done at once, too.
    1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent
    Note

    A transitive turn of the usual verb, in which someone makes one thing hang on another. Norman Lindsay's Age of Consent (1938) has a man "depending the disposal of his person and his plight on Bradly." The thing made conditional is the object and the condition follows on. That sets it apart from the ordinary "be contingent" verb, where the subject is what hangs. The everyday paraphrase is make one thing depend on another.

    Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 3 facts

Less common meanings

  1. 4
    hang downverbliteraryintransitive
    To hang downward, sustained by being attached to something above, as a badge or ornament suspended from another element.

    From the chandelier depend dozens of crystal pendants.

    A small wax seal depends from the charter by a silken cord.

    UsageUsually with from, not on: lamps depend from the ceiling, meaning they hang from it.

    Similarhang, dangle

    Note

    Here the Latin root still shows through: dē- plus pendeō, "to hang". Heraldry keeps the literal meaning in working order, so a blazon can say that a harp of gold and a badge depend from an Imperial Crown. Elsewhere it is a literary verb for things that dangle, like Melville's icicles depending from the bows in Moby-Dick.

  2. 5
    not yet settledverbarchaic
    To remain pending; to be still undetermined or undecided.
    In perjury, the capias, warrant, and affidavit, are good evidence that a cause was depending.
    1836, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King's Bench
    "A Letter of the King sent to his Proctors at Rome, concerning a Case of his in the said Court depending."
    1837, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe
    Note

    This sense was at home in legal language. A cause was "depending in court," and old reports of King's Bench cases speak of evidence "that a cause was depending." Foxe's Acts and Monuments places a case "in the said Court depending." Modern prose generally uses pending for this sense. In these legal examples, depending means "still undecided," not "contingent."

Practice

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Origin

The root is Latin dependeō, made of dē- plus pendeō ("to hang"); through Old French dependre, it gave Middle English dependen. In the sense "be contingent," it pushed out the native Old English hangian ("to hang or depend").