1.act of improving by expanding or enlarging or refining;
he congratulated them on their development of a plan to meet the emergency
2.a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage);
the development of his ideas took many years
3.a recent event that has some relevance for the present situation;
recent developments in Iraq
4.the act of making some area of land or water more profitable or productive or useful;
the development of Alaskan resources
5.a district that has been developed to serve some purpose;
such land is practical for small park developments
6.a state in which things are improving; the result of developing (as in the early part of a game of chess);
after he saw the latest development he changed his mind and became a supporter
7.(biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level;
he proposed an indicator of osseous development in children
8.processing a photosensitive material in order to make an image visible;
the development and printing of his pictures took only two hours