<p><strong>Adjective</strong></p><ul><li>Of or relating to difference or diversity.</li><li>Constituting a difference; distinguishing; distinctive: a differential feature.</li><li>Exhibiting or depending upon a difference or distinction.</li><li>Physics, Machinery: Pertaining to or involving the difference of two or more motions, forces, etc.</li><li>Mathematics: Pertaining to or involving a derivative or derivatives.</li></ul><p><strong>Noun</strong></p><ul><li>A difference or the amount of difference, as in rate, cost, quantity, degree, or quality, between things that are comparable.</li><li>Also called differential gear: An epicyclic train of gears designed to permit two or more shafts to rotate at different speeds, as a set of gears in an automobile permitting the rear wheels to be driven at different speeds when the car is turning.</li><li>Mathematics: A function of two variables that is obtained from a given function, y = f(x), and that expresses the approximate increment in the given function as the derivative of the function times the increment in the independent variable, written as dy = f′(x)dx. Any generalization of this function to higher dimensions.</li><li>Commerce: The difference involved in a differential rate.</li><li>Differential rate.</li><li>Physics: The quantitative difference between two or more forces, motions, etc.; a pressure differential.</li></ul>