depend on
phrasal verbdepend on/upon somebody/something
- to rely on somebody/something and be able to trust them
- He was the sort of person you could depend on.
- depend on/upon somebody/something to do something He knew he could depend upon her to deal with the situation.
Want to learn more?
Find out which words work together and produce more natural sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app.
- to be sure or expect that something will happen synonym count on somebody/something
- Depend upon it (= you can be sure) we won't give up.
- depend on/upon somebody/something doing something Can we depend on you coming in on Sunday?
- (formal) You can depend on his coming in on Sunday.
- (ironic) You can depend on her to be (= she always is) late.
depend on/upon somebody/something (for something)
- (not usually used in the progressive tenses) to need money, help, etc. from somebody/something else for a particular purpose
- The community depends on the shipping industry for its survival.
- I don't want to depend too much on my parents.
depend on/upon something
- (not used in the progressive tenses) to be affected or decided by something
- Does the quality of teaching depend on class size?
- It would depend on the circumstances.
- depend on/upon how, what, etc… Whether we need more food depends on how many people turn up.
Grammar Point depend ondepend on- In informal English, it is quite common to say depend rather than depend on before words like what, how or whether:
- It depends what you mean by ‘hostile’.
- It depends on how you define the term ‘hostile’.
Extra Examples- The future of the company will depend crucially on how consumers respond.
- The outcome seems to depend on the type of soil used.
- Whether or not we can go ultimately depends on the weather.