deterred
Americanadjective
-
discouraged or restrained from acting or proceeding.
A visible thief is a deterred thief, so installing motion-sensing lights on your property helps to protect it.
-
kept from happening; prevented or checked.
Assuming that those 79,000 deterred property crimes have an average cost of $1,900 each, that’s a savings of over $150 million.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of deterred
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.
Allies are assured, and adversaries are deterred, by appearances of strength and signals of commitment.
From Slate • May 27, 2026
Neither the athletes taking part, nor the invite-only crowd in Vegas, seem to be deterred.
From BBC • May 23, 2026
The mosque and those who attend have come to expect such rhetoric, but it hasn’t deterred those who worship there.
From Los Angeles Times • May 21, 2026
But Viking’s core customer base of older, wealthier Americans hasn’t been deterred from traveling, Talactac and Hagen told Barron’s last month.
From Barron's • May 14, 2026
Moreover, the threat of violence often deterred blacks from pressing legitimate claims, making the “civil rights” of former slaves largely illusory—existing on paper but rarely to be found in real life.
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
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.
