Meaning

• The quality of being different.

  "You need to learn to be more tolerant of difference."

• A characteristic of something that makes it different from something else.

  "There are three differences between these two pictures."

• A disagreement or argument.

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

• Significant change in or effect on a situation or state.

  "It just won't make much difference to me."

• The result of a subtraction; sometimes the absolute value of this result.

  "The difference between 3 and 21 is 18."

• Choice; preference.

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

• 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 (\scriptstyle A \overline B + \overline A B).

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

Meaning

• To distinguish or differentiate.