de

¹ American  

[duh, duh, de, di] / də, də, dɛ, dɪ /

preposition

1. from; of (used in French, Spanish, and Portuguese personal names, originally to indicate place of origin).

   Comte de Rochambeau; Don Ricardo de Aragón.

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DE ² American  

abbreviation

1. Delaware (approved especially for use with zip code).

2. destroyer escort.

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de' ³ American  

[duh, de] / də, dɛ /

preposition

1. dei (used in Italian names as an elided form ofdei ).

   de' Medici.

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de- ⁴ American  

1. a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin (decide ); also used to indicate privation, removal, and separation (dehumidify ), negation (demerit; derange ), descent (degrade; deduce ), reversal (detract ), intensity (decompound ).

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D.E. ⁵ American  

abbreviation

1. Doctor of Engineering.

2. driver education.

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de- ¹ British  

prefix

1. removal of or from something specified

   deforest

   dethrone

2. reversal of something

   decode

   decompose

   desegregate

3. departure from

   decamp

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DE ² British  

abbreviation

1. (formerly in Britain) Department of Employment

2. Delaware

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de ³ British  

/ də /

1. of; from: occurring as part of some personal names and originally indicating place of origin

   Simon de Montfort

   D'Arcy

   de la Mare

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de ⁴ British  

abbreviation

1. Germany

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Etymology

Origin of de¹

From French, Portuguese, Spanish, from Latin dē

Origin of de-⁴

Middle English < Latin dē-, prefixal use of dē (preposition) from, away from, of, out of; in some words, < French < Latin dē- or dis- dis- ¹

Example Sentences

So far, it has confirmed five locations including Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base, an airfield known as La Carlota and Port La Guaira, Caracas' main conduit to the Caribbean Sea.

From BBC

In recent months, U.S. enforcement actions against Venezuelan oil tankers, including seizures and a de facto blockade, have sharply curtailed exports, at times cutting them roughly in half.

From Barron's

Venezuela once pumped as much as 3 million barrels a day in 2013, according to state-run company Petróleos de Venezuela, known as PdVSA.

From The Wall Street Journal

Recall that almost 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French commentator on American politics, argued that the customs, beliefs, and behaviors of the people are more important than anything else in making American democracy work.

From Slate

As the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik explained more than two decades ago, de Tocqueville knew that “it wasn’t social contracts or declarations of the rights of man which made democracies work but the subtle and contradictory workings of existing mores and manners. … He saw that democracy belonged, in his wonderful phrase, to the empire of example rather than to the kingdom of reason; he saw that it was habitual before it was anything else, and wondered how that habit could grow, and how it could be deformed.”

From Slate