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define

verb

di-ˈfīn How to pronounce define (audio)
Definition of definenext
1
as in to trace
to draw or make apparent the outline of the glass skyscraper's sleek silhouette was strikingly defined by the setting sun to its west

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2
as in to describe
to mark the limits of the river defines the town on the south

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3
as in to characterize
to point out the chief quality or qualities of an individual or group a woman who is defined by her unswerving loyalty to her friends

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4
as in to specify
to give the rules about (something) clearly and exactly let me define the task so that there is no doubt in your minds about what needs to be done

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of define Her longer-term goal is to bring more sapphic community members into the planning process rather than remain the sole person defining what Sapphic Con should become. — Kansas City Star, 18 Sep. 2026 After all, a regular graph is defined by the property that every vertex has the same number of edges. — Paulina Rowińska, Quanta Magazine, 18 Sep. 2026 Her first two albums were defined by her frank and candid reckoning with her sexuality and Catholic upbringing. — Josh Crutchmer, Rolling Stone, 18 Sep. 2026 The Croation tennis player shares the accessories that defined her US Open 2026 experience. — Emily Tannenbaum, Glamour, 17 Sep. 2026 See All Example Sentences for define
Recent Examples of Synonyms for define
  1. trace
  2. describe
  3. characterize
  4. specify
  5. outline
  6. limit
  7. portray
  8. delineate
Verb
  • Teams should trace root causes, fix the control failures that enabled the path, and retest to prove the attacker’s route is actually gone.
    — Expert Panel®, Forbes.com, 14 Sep. 2026
  • No one had done this thorough a job to trace the legend’s origins and find out what is true and what is demonstrably false about it — and, more importantly, why the damn thing has outlasted nearly every other gossip item in the history of Hollywood.
    — Allen Salkin, HollywoodReporter, 14 Sep. 2026
Definition of trace
Verb
  • The optics are also described as being resistant to fast-moving fluids and particles, as well as to many chemicals.
    — Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering, 17 Sep. 2026
  • For now, the court record describes a shipment declared as storage boxes, coolers and a chair that federal agents say instead contained firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and an assortment of unfinished receivers and other gun parts.
    — Antonio María Delgado, Miami Herald, 17 Sep. 2026
Definition of describe
Verb
  • This is the visual flow of the arrangement, which is characterized by the repetition of elements or features.
    — Madeline Buiano, Martha Stewart, 19 Sep. 2026
  • Far fewer teams can quantify how autosuggest modifiers alter user behavior, how star-rating variance suppresses click-through rates or how ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and other AI platforms characterize their brand in response to real user queries.
    — Paul M. Wilson, Forbes.com, 18 Sep. 2026
Definition of characterize
Verb
  • The statement did not specify what types of drones were being tested in the southern Pingtung county.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 18 Sep. 2026
  • The guidance didn’t specify which of the hundreds of subsections chapter 115 of Missouri’s statutes Peters was citing.
    — Jack Harvel, Kansas City Star, 18 Sep. 2026
Definition of specify
Verb
  • The money made from the fee, a document outlining the proposal says, will help the city avoid $125 million per year in future full street reconstruction costs.
    — Emily Holshouser, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 19 Sep. 2026
  • The new clinical guidance, released late Thursday, outlines how the program would work.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 18 Sep. 2026
Definition of outline
Verb
  • Striving for perfection at the early stages of building a business can slow down growth, which in turn limits the ability to employ others and help the economy to prosper.
    — Deann Evans, Forbes.com, 14 Sep. 2026
  • That’s partly thanks to US technology controls that limit Chinese companies’ access to advanced AI processors — essential for training increasingly complex AI models.
    — John Liu, CNN Money, 14 Sep. 2026
Definition of limit
Verb
  • Another poll, commissioned by an independent expenditure group supporting Raman, portrayed the race as a statistical tie, at least initially.
    — Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 19 Sep. 2026
  • Dostoyevsky’s sniveling devil comes closest to portraying the man chiefly responsible for organizing the Final Solution.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 18 Sep. 2026
Definition of portray
Verb
  • Data centers have become an unusually bipartisan flash point in the midterm elections, as candidates race to delineate policy platforms and respond to public opinion.
    — Justine McDaniel, Los Angeles Times, 6 Sep. 2026
  • More importantly, part two closes an emotional circle that the first one had just begun to delineate.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 4 Sep. 2026
Definition of delineate

Browse Nearby Words

definable
define
defined
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Cite this Entry

“Define.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/define. Accessed 22 Sep. 2026.

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