distant

comparative more distant · superlative most distant · alternative obsolete distaunt · alternative obsolete dystant · alternative obsolete dystaunt

1. Far off (physically, logically or mentally).

   We heard a distant rumbling but didn't pay any more attention to it. She was surprised to find that her fiancé was a distant relative of hers. His distant look showed that he was not listening to me.

   1 more example

   Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC

   Synonyms: faraway

2. Emotionally unresponsive or unwilling to express genuine feelings.

   Ever since our argument, she has been totally distant toward me.

   Synonyms: aloof, cold, aloof, cool, frosty, hankty, hard-to-get, offish

3. not comparablebroadcastingImported into a cable television system from a different market (and thus possibly incurring a copyright royalty).

   Finally, there will be those unusual situations where a signal is distant to part of a CATV system and local to the rest of it.

   1983, Gary L. Christensen, Cable Television in a New Era, page 128

   1 more example

   Any determination that a particular television signal is "distant" must, of course, be made with respect to its proximity to a specific local area, which we have termed the CATV community, […]

   1973, Cable Television, Rand Corporation

   Antonyms: local

plural distants · alternative obsolete distaunt · alternative obsolete dystant · alternative obsolete dystaunt