Words / D / Medicine

defer

verb/dɪˈfɜː/

B1CEFR level
20/100Rarity: fairly common
TechnicalRegister

To postpone a task to a later time or hand the decision to someone more appropriate.

We can defer the non-urgent review to the morning ward round.

Similar: postpone, delay

Topic: Clinical handover in Medical English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More medicine words: Clinical handover