transfer

UK/tɹɑːnsˈfɜː/US/tɹænsˈfɚ/

nounB24 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,506 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: transferred, transfers, transferring

A transfer is a change from one plane or train to another in the middle of a journey. Two hours in Frankfurt with a bag on your back, reading the board for gate B32.

The verb is stressed on the second half, transFER, and it covers anything moved from one place to another: transfer money to an account, transfer a call, transfer a patient to another hospital, transfer your files to a new laptop. The noun is stressed on the first half, TRANSfer: a bank transfer, a transfer to the Rome office, a footballer's transfer to a bigger club. Skills can be transferable — what you learned in one job and can carry into the next. In a hotel booking, an airport transfer is the car or minibus that takes you there. Watch the spelling of the forms: transferring and transferred double the R, while transferable and transference do not.

Definitions of transfer

1nountransferA change from one plane, train or bus to another during a journey.B2~2%
“The ticket includes a transfer in Amsterdam with two hours to spare.”
synonyms: connection, changeover
2verbjobTo move someone or something from one place, job or owner to another.B2~2%
“He transferred the money that afternoon and rang to say so.”
3nounactThe act of moving money, a person or a thing from one place to another.B2~60%
“The transfer took three working days to clear.”
4nounplayersA player's move from one sports club to another.B2~36%
“The club broke its record on a single transfer.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: connection

Also practised as

verbTo move something to a different place or owner.

Where it comes from

Latin trānsferō meant to bear across, and the carrying part comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰer-, 'to carry'. Translate is the same idea by another road: a translator carries a meaning across into another language, while a transfer carries you across into another train. Confer, defer and prefer are all built on that same carrying verb.

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰer-
Latin
trānsferō
English, today
transfer

From Latin trānsferō. From Latin trānsferō (“to bear across”). Distant a doublet of translate. See also collate and confer, delate and defer, as well as prelate and prefer among others.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Travel & Transport, A Man Called Ove, Business & Money

First appears in chapter 29 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

transfer in the wild

Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Digital transmission and digital reception are the transfer of either a digitized analog signal or a born-digital bitstream.
Data communication
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client over a computer network.
File Transfer Protocol
Engineers also consider the transfer of mass of differing chemical species (mass transfer in the form of advection), either cold or hot, to achieve heat transfer.
Heat transfer
Such a transfer is completed by registering the player into the new club through FIFA.
Transfer window

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the trānsferō family

transfer translate translation

transfer — used about once every 163 pages · #1,506 · point at the bar for the others

bank transfer

Definitions of transfer

1nountransferA change from one plane, train or bus to another during a journey.B2~2%

“The ticket includes a transfer in Amsterdam with two hours to spare.”

synonyms: connection, changeover

2verbjobTo move someone or something from one place, job or owner to another.B2~2%

“He transferred the money that afternoon and rang to say so.”

3nounactThe act of moving money, a person or a thing from one place to another.B2~60%

“The transfer took three working days to clear.”

4nounplayersA player's move from one sports club to another.B2~36%

“The club broke its record on a single transfer.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: connection