def
See also: Def.
English
Pronunciation
Abbreviation
def.
Adjective
def (comparative deffer, superlative deffest)
- (African-American Vernacular, slang) very good (short for "definitive" or "definitely", alternately an eye spelling of "death" referring to an absolute)
- Safire, William (1988 September 25) “On Language: 'Eat Your Peas'”, in The New York Times[1], The New York Times Company "Def, a clip of definitely is now the word for terrif, and on some campuses has out-neatened neat."
- Brent, Staples (1988 December 18) “On Language: 'High on the Five'”, in The New York Times[2], The New York Times Company " Failing to see the word's antecedents, I suspected that def was either bogus or an orphan, lost to its slang ancestors through mispronunciation or misspelling... Three critics of popular music failed to provide me with satisfactory antecedents. One suggested that def was an abbreviation of definitely, another suggested deference and the third had no hunch at all... Russell Simmons, a founder of the company [Def Jam Recordings], said that his partner, in designing the logo for the company's record label, may have been the first to set def down in writing. Simmons also said that his associate had clearly misheard the word as it was then spoken in the streets. Def, Simmons said, was a mispronunciation of death."
Anagrams
Middle English
Adjective
def
- Alternative form of deef
Serbo-Croatian
Etymology
Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish دف (def), from Persian دف (daf).
Pronunciation
Noun
dȅf m (Cyrillic spelling де̏ф)
Declension
Declension of def
See also
Zazaki
Etymology
Noun
def
- daf (a Persian frame drum)
Categories:
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ɛf
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- African-American Vernacular English
- English slang
- Middle English lemmas
- Middle English adjectives
- Serbo-Croatian terms borrowed from Ottoman Turkish
- Serbo-Croatian terms derived from Ottoman Turkish
- Serbo-Croatian terms derived from Persian
- Serbo-Croatian terms with IPA pronunciation
- Serbo-Croatian lemmas
- Serbo-Croatian nouns
- Serbo-Croatian masculine nouns
- sh:Musical instruments
- Zazaki lemmas
- Zazaki nouns
- zza:Musical instruments