dependent

Etymology

Originally dependant, from French dépendant, present participle of dépendre (“to depend”) (in English assimilated to Latin dēpendēns).

adj

1. Relying upon; depending upon.
   At that point I was dependent on financial aid for my tuition.
   It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries. 2013-06-07, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 19
2. (statistics) Having a probability that is affected by the outcome of a separate event.
   The formula for finding the probablity of one event followed by a dependent event is written P(A, B) = P(A) × P(B/A) where P(B/A) is read “the probability of B given A.” 1994, Kathryn Stout, Maximum Math, page 217
   Within the GMM framework, the distribution of returns conditional on the market return can be both serially dependent and conditionally heteroscedastic. 2005, Alejandro Balbás, Rosario Romera, Esther Ruiz, Recent Advances in Applied Probability, Springer, page 49
   Is it possible to find events A, B of Ω so that A and B are independent? The answer to this simple and interesting problem is no. A probability space (Ω,Σ,P) is called a “dependent probability space” if there are no nontrivial independent events in Ω, (Ω,Σ,P) is called an independent space otherwise. 2006, M.M. Rao, Randall J. Swift, Probability Theory with Applications (Second Edition), Springer, page 87
3. (of Irish/Manx/Scottish (Gaelic) verb forms) Used after a particle (with one or two exceptions), such as those which express questions, subordinate clauses, and negative sentences.
4. (medicine) Affecting the lower part of the body, such as the legs while standing up, or the back while supine.
5. Hanging down.
   a dependent bough or leaf

noun

1. (US) One who relies on another for support
   With two children and an ailing mother, she had three dependents in all.
2. (grammar) An element in phrase or clause structure that is not the head. Includes complements, modifiers and determiners.
3. (grammar) The aorist subjunctive or subjunctive perfective: a form of a verb not used independently but preceded by a particle to form the negative or a tense form. Found in Greek and in the Gaelic languages.