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import {noun}:
1. (usually imports) A commodity, article, or service brought in from abroad for sale:
2. [in singular] The implicit meaning or significance of something
How do 'importance' and definition 2 of 'import' differ? I ask not about definition 1 above that 'importance' lacks.
Import is rarely used to mean "significance" outside of formal/academic writing. Importance is used for this purpose in nearly all cases.
This isn't simply a difference between casual conversation and formal writing. I'm a reasonably well spoken and well read native speaker of American English who is not afraid of using my vocabulary, and I would be surprised if I had ever used that meaning in conversation before. Importance is far more common, probably even in formal and academic writing. In modern writing, import seems to be used as a way of making writing sound more sophisticated or in fiction, to make a character seem pompous.
"importance" is the normal word. In elevated or literary style you can find "import"(stress on the first syllable): Yes, it is a matter of 'import. (I have read it only once in a SF-novel.)
"Importance" is the widely accepted word for something of significant meaning as "import" is usually associated with the bringing in of goods. However, both are perfectly alright to use.
"import" is usually associated with the bringing in of goods.
I have heard people use import in scientific conferences like 'what is the scientific import of your observations'? In this case it means significance
I just wrote a formal e-mail where I said:
"please feel free to disclose anything of import".
Personally, I think "import" sounded better melodically- it was a purely stylistic choice. I think in terms of meaning, however, both "of importance" and "of import" are exactly the same. So pick the one that flows best in the sentence you are writing!
Firstly, I'm not a native speaker but from personal experience the word "import" is most often used in the meaning "A commodity, article, or service brought in from abroad for sale" and less often used in the meaning "The implicit meaning or significance of something".
As synonyms "import" and "importance" aren't quite interchangeable but share common meanings. The word "import" carries more than is given by the definition you refer to. From practice, the word "import" implies several definitions (especially 'of import'):
Thus knowing this we can understand the following examples as:
