defer to

verb

deferred to; deferring to; defers to

1

: to allow (someone else) to decide or choose something

You have more experience with this, so I'm going to defer to you.

deferring to the experts

2

defer to (something) : to agree to follow (someone else's decision, a tradition, etc.)

The court defers to precedent in cases like these.

He deferred to his parents' wishes.

Examples of defer to in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling, sided with Roundup maker Bayer, shielding it from thousands of state failure-to-warn lawsuits by deferring to federal regulators who deem cancer risks unlikely. — Lindsay Whitehurst, Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2026

This only works when authorization, validation, business rules and state-transition controls are enforced at the service boundary, instead of being dispersed across user interfaces or deferred to downstream systems. — Slavik Zorin, Forbes.com, 25 June 2026

White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not answer the question and deferred to the health department. — Beth Mole, ArsTechnica, 23 June 2026

Were his teammates deferring to him too much during the game? — Russell Lewis, NPR, 23 June 2026

Rhymes for defer to

• amadou
• avenue
• ballyhoo
• baraboo
• barbecue
• barbeque
• bugaboo
• cabildo
• caribou
• cockatoo
• detinue
• devalue