Meaning & use
respect
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountable
Admiration for someone's qualities, achievements, or character.
Grammar: Usually uncountable; common with for: respect for a teacher.
Patterns
- have respect for someone
- earn respect
- win the respect of someone
The students have great respect for their coach.
She earned respect by admitting her mistake.
He won the respect of the whole team.
noununcountable
Careful consideration for someone's feelings, rights, beliefs, or privacy.
Grammar: Common in out of respect for and treat with respect.
Patterns
- out of respect for someone
- treat someone with respect
- show respect for something
Out of respect for her neighbors, she ended the party early.
Everyone deserves to be treated with respect.
The law must show respect for basic rights.
nounusually pluralformal
Polite greetings, admiration, or formal expressions sent to someone.
Grammar: Use respects in phrases like pay one's respects or send respects.
Patterns
- pay one's respects
- send respects
- give respects to someone
They visited the family to pay their respects.
Please give my respects to your grandmother.
The mourners stood quietly to pay their respects.
verbtransitive
To admire someone for their qualities, abilities, or achievements.
Grammar: Takes an object; often followed by for plus the reason.
Patterns
- respect someone for something
- deeply respect someone
- respect someone's judgment
I respect her for speaking honestly.
Many voters respect his long public service.
We respect your decision even if we disagree.
verbtransitive
To treat someone or something with care, consideration, or obedience.
Grammar: Takes an object such as rights, privacy, rules, or boundaries.
Patterns
- respect someone's privacy
- respect the rules
- respect the environment
Please respect the privacy of the residents.
Drivers must respect the speed limit near schools.
A good neighbor respects other people's boundaries.
Word forms
| third person singular | respects |
|---|---|
| past tense | respected |
| past participle | respected |
| -ing form | respecting |
Common combinations
- mutual respect
- The agreement was built on mutual respect.
- earn respect
- Leaders earn respect by listening carefully.
- out of respect for
- Out of respect for the jury, the room stayed silent.
- respect someone's privacy
- The app should respect the user's privacy.
- with all due respect
- With all due respect, I see the risk differently.
Synonyms and how they differ
- admiration
- Admiration is the feeling of approval and esteem, not the behavior of consideration.
- esteem
- Esteem is formal admiration, often for a person's character or work.
- regard
- Regard can mean respect or consideration and is common in formal phrases.
- deference
- Deference means polite yielding to authority or older people, stronger than ordinary respect.
Opposites
Word family
- respectful adjective
- Showing respect or polite consideration.
- respectfully adverb
- In a respectful way.
- respectable adjective
- Decent or acceptable in social terms; different from respectful.
- respective adjective
- Belonging separately to each person or thing mentioned.
Commonly confused: respect or respectful? respect or respective?
respect vs respectful
Respectful means showing respect; respectable means decent or fairly good, not admired.
respect vs respective
Respective means each one's own and is not about admiration.
Practice
We disagreed with the manager, but ___ his experience, we heard him out.
Choose one answer.
Out of respect for means because of consideration for someone's experience. With respect to and in respect of mean concerning, and with respectful is not grammatical before a noun phrase here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “respect”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.