Noun

(en noun)

An act of distributing or state of being distributed.

An apportionment by law (of funds, property).

(business, marketing) The process by which goods get to final consumers over a geographical market, including storing, selling, shipping and advertising.

The frequency of occurrence or extent of existence.

Anything distributed; portion; share.

* Atterbury

our charitable distributions

The result of distributing; arrangement.

(mathematics, statistics) A probability distribution; the set of relative likelihoods that a variable will have a value in a given interval.

(computing) A set of bundled software components; distro.

(economics) The apportionment of income or wealth in a population.

The wealth distribution became extremely skewed in the kleptocracy.

(finance) The process or result of the sale of securities, especially their placement among investors with long-term investment strategies.

The resolution of a whole into its parts.

The process of sorting the types and placing them in their proper boxes in the cases.

The steps or operations by which steam is supplied to and withdrawn from the cylinder at each stroke of the piston: admission, suppression or cutting off, release or exhaust, and compression of exhaust steam prior to the next admission.

(lb)

* 1553', , ''The Arte of Rhetorique'' (1962), book iii, folio 99, page 209 ''s.v.'' “' Di?tribucion ”:

It is al?o called a di?tribucion , when we diuide the whole, into ?euerall partes, and ?aie we haue foure poynctes, whereof we purpo?e to ?peake, comp?ehendyng our whole talke within compa??e of the?ame.

* 1728', (Ephraim Chambers), '''' I, page 230/2 ''s.v.'' “' Di?tribution ²”:

Di?tribution, in Rhetoric, a Kind of De?cription ; or a Figure, whereby an orderly Divi?ion, and Enumeration is made of the principal Qualities of a Subject.

Noun

(uncountable) The quality of being different.

(countable) A characteristic of something that makes it different from something else.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

(countable) A disagreement or argument.

We have our little differences , but we are firm friends.

* Shakespeare

What was the difference ? It was a contention in public.

* T. Ellwood

Away therefore went I with the constable, leaving the old warden and the young constable to compose their difference as they could.

(countable, uncountable) Significant change in or effect on a situation or state.

* 1908 , (Kenneth Grahame), (The Wind in the Willows)

The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and once more they began to see surfaces—meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous.

(countable) The result of a subtraction; sometimes the absolute value of this result.

(obsolete) Choice; preference.

* Spenser

That now be chooseth with vile difference / To be a beast, and lack intelligence.

(heraldry) An addition to a coat of arms to distinguish two people's bearings which would otherwise be the same. See augmentation and cadency.

(logic) The quality or attribute which is added to those of the genus to constitute a species; a differentia.

(logic circuits) A Boolean operation which is TRUE when the two input variables are different but is otherwise FALSE; the XOR operation ($\backslash scriptstyle\; A\; \backslash overline\; B\; +\; \backslash overline\; A\; B$).

(relational algebra) the set of elements that are in one set but not another ($\backslash scriptstyle\; A\; \backslash overline\; B$).