distant
Americanadjective
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far off or apart in space; not near at hand; remote or removed (often followed byfrom ).
a distant place; a town three miles distant from here.
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apart or far off in time.
distant centuries past.
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remote or far apart in any respect.
a distant relative.
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reserved or aloof; not familiar or cordial.
a distant greeting.
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arriving from or going to a distance, as a communication, journey, etc..
I have here a distant letter from Japan.
adjective
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far away or apart in space or time
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(postpositive) separated in space or time by a specified distance
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apart in relevance, association, or relationship
a distant cousin
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coming from or going to a faraway place
a distant journey
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remote in manner; aloof
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abstracted; absent
a distant look
Other Word Forms
- distantly adverb
- distantness noun
- overdistant adjective
- overdistantly adverb
- quasi-distant adjective
- quasi-distantly adverb
- ultradistant adjective
- undistant adjective
- undistantly adverb
Etymology
Origin of distant
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English dista(u)nt, from Anglo-French, from Latin distant-, stem of distāns “standing apart,” present participle of distāre “to stand apart,” from di- di- 2 + stāre “to stand”; stand
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A by-election in Greater Manchester might seem somewhat distant from Scotland - several hundred miles away at best, across a border.
From BBC
The team also found that before it disappeared, Proto-Hyperion could have tilted the orbit of Saturn's distant moon Iapetus, potentially solving another longstanding mystery about the Saturn system.
From Science Daily
"The recruitment scandal makes clear that the Ukraine war is no longer a distant geopolitical issue for African governments," the International Crisis Group said in a new report published on Friday.
From Barron's
Soon “the spaceship is forced to land on a distant planet, and Rodolfo’s hallucinations grow increasingly intense until he finally succumbs to oxygen deprivation.”
Instead of burning fuel, Munday and graduate student researcher Tristan Deppe explored whether the cold side could be linked to something far colder and much more distant: deep space.
From Science Daily
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
