First Known Use: circa 1623
Dictionary
discrepancy
noun dis·crep·an·cy \dis-ˈkre-pən-sē\
: a difference especially between things that should be the same
plural dis·crep·an·cies
Full Definition of DISCREPANCY
1
: the quality or state of disagreeing or being at variance
2
: an instance of disagreeing or being at variance
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Examples of DISCREPANCY
- Dr. Derman, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and became managing director, was a forerunner of the many physicists and other scientists who have flooded Wall Street in recent years, moving from a world in which a discrepancy of a few percentage points in a measurement can mean a Nobel Prize or unending mockery to a world in which a few percent one way can land you in jail and a few percent the other way can win you your own private Caribbean island. —Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 9 Mar. 2009
- Why the difference? Why are some individuals so outwardly altered by time and others not? Or, in other words, why is there often a discrepancy between chronological age and biological age? —Time, 17 Oct. 2005
- If an article is on one machine but not the other, a copy is made to eliminate the discrepancy. —Simson Garfinkel, Technology Review, November 2001
- The discrepancy can't be written off simply as lack of data, because it shows up in one of the best-studied periods in Earth's history … —Tim Appenzeller, Science, 12 Feb. 1993
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Origin of DISCREPANCY
(see discrepant)
Related to DISCREPANCY
DISCREPANCIES Defined for Kids
discrepancy
noun dis·crep·an·cy \di-ˈskre-pən-sē\
Definition of DISCREPANCY for Kids
: a difference between things that are expected to be the same <There is a discrepancy in the records.>
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