Meaning of conference in English

conference

/ˈkɒn.fər.əns/ us

/ˈkɑːn.fɚ.əns/

conference noun [C] (MEETING)

an event, sometimes lasting a few days, at which there is a group of talks on a particular subject, or a meeting in which especially business matters are discussed formally:

a conference on women's rights

They frequently hold conferences at that hotel.

I'm speaking at/attending a conference next week.

Should I book the conference room for the meeting?

Compare

awayday mainly UK
congress (MEETING)
consultation
convention (MEETING)
forum (MEETING)
meeting
seminar
summit (MEETING)
symposium formal

be in conference formal

to be in a meeting:

Ms O'Neill isn't available at the moment. She's in conference.

More examplesFewer examples

He's giving a paper on thermodynamics at a conference at Manchester University.
A group of four teachers were delegated to represent the school at the union conference.
An international medical conference was established for the interchange of new ideas and approaches.
She called a news conference to give her side of the story.
The hotel is an ideal venue for conferences and business meetings.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Official meetings

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conference noun [C] (SPORTS)

a group of sports teams that play each other in organized competitions:

They can win because they have the most talent in their conference.

He guided the team to the Southern Conference championship.

More examplesFewer examples

This year's ACC may be the strongest conference since the '84–'85 Big East.
The Canadian prime minister congratulated the Calgary Flames on their victory in the Western Conference finals.
Their most formidable opponent would appear to be the Falcons, whom they wouldn't face until the conference championship game.
His performance earned him North Central Conference player of the week honours for the third consecutive time this season.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Competitions, & parts of competitions

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(Definition of conference from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

conference | American Dictionary

conference

noun [ C/U ]

/ˈkɑn·fər·əns, -frəns/

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a large, formal meeting at which there are groups of talks on a particular subject, or a small, private meeting for discussion of a particular matter:

[ C ] She spoke at a conference in Geneva.

(Definition of conference from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

conference | Business English

conference

noun [ C ]

MEETINGS

/ˈkɒnfərəns/ us

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an event, sometimes lasting a few days, at which there are a lot of talks and meetings about a particular subject:

a conference centre/hall

hold/organize a conference (on sth) The institute will be holding a conference on higher education and economic growth next spring.

attend/go to/speak at a conference Most of the department attended the Mobile World conference in Barcelona.

He was the keynote speaker at a conference in Frankfurt.

conference delegate/participant Conference delegates will receive a discount on the price of their hotel rooms.

a private and formal meeting between a small number of people:

After a short conference with his advisers, he announced his decision to resign.

a conference room

be in conference formal

to be in a meeting:

She directed him into a meeting room, where a number of executives were in conference.

See also

news conference
press conference
sales conference
shipping conference
teleconference

(Definition of conference from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of conference

conference

It almost seems as if the difficulties surrounding the 1929 conference made everyone involved hesitate to approach the issue again.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Unlike many sets of conference papers, they pick on common themes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This means a whole lot of things could change by the time we get to the national conference.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To be sure, the conference tried to clarify things into four strands, each with three sessions of three papers.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We would like to thank conference participants for their comments and suggestions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Unlike the fall conference, each committee discussed the same four topics.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We organized these conferences to try to get people together and discuss the issues in what we thought were useful ways.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The conference elicited a number of distinguished papers, and the proceedings will soon be published.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The consistent typing makes these books more readable than many camera-ready conference proceedings.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Transcripts that were difficult to score were reviewed by both coders and resolved by conference.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The papers were presented at an international conference in 2004 and were edited to form chapters in this book.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

He has published dozens of articles in scholarly journals, written and edited numerous books, and delivered hundreds of presentations at conferences around the world.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

He enjoyed a party and always ensured that his conferences were as good on the social side as they were in purpose and intellectual content.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Columnists wondered why a century-old conference paper came in for such blistering attacks.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They categorize the four areas covered by the technical papers in the conference and summarize the highlights of the plenary sessions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of conference

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with conference

conference

These are words often used in combination with conference.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

annual conference

I would like formally to welcome you to this year's annual conference.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

athletic conference

Most or all members belong to at least one other athletic conference.

From

Wikipedia

This example is from Wikipedia and may be reused under a CC BY-SA license.

biennial conference

Each union, at its annual or biennial conference, determines its structure.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

See all collocations with conference

What is the pronunciation of conference?

Translations of conference

in Chinese (Traditional)

會議，大會, 討論會，協商會…

in Chinese (Simplified)

会议，大会, 讨论会，协商会…

in Spanish

conferencia, congreso, conferencia [feminine]…

in Portuguese

conferência, congresso, convenção…

in more languages

in Marathi

in Japanese

in Turkish

in French

in Catalan

in Dutch

in Tamil

in Hindi

in Gujarati

in Danish

in Swedish

in Malay

in German

in Norwegian

in Urdu

in Ukrainian

in Russian

in Telugu

in Arabic

in Bengali

in Czech

in Indonesian

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in Polish

in Korean

in Italian

एखादी घटना, कधीकधी काही दिवस चालते, ज्यात एखाद्या विशिष्ट विषयावर चर्चेचा एक गट असतो किंवा अशी बैठक ज्यामध्ये विशेषत: व्यावसायिक बाबींवर औपचारिकपणे चर्चा केली जाते…

会議, 会議（かいぎ）, 相談（そうだん）…

konferans, kongre, müzakere…

conférence [feminine], congrès [masculine], rendez-vous [masculine]…

conferència, congrés…

congres…

ஒரு நிகழ்வு, சில நேரங்களில் சில நாட்கள் நீடிக்கும், அதில் ஒரு குறிப்பிட்ட விஷயத்தில் ஒரு குழு பேச்சுக்கள் அல்லது குறிப்பாக வணிக விஷயங்கள் முறையாக விவாதிக்கப்படும் கூட்டத்தை உள்ளடக்கியது…

(विशेष विषयों पर चर्चा के लिए कुछ दिनों का एक) सम्मलेन…

પરિષદ…

møde, konference…

konferens…

mesyuarat…

die Konferenz…