Reliant means depending on someone or something else for help, support, or what you need. When you're reliant on your parents for transportation to soccer practice, you can't get there without them. A town might be reliant on a single factory for jobs, meaning most families depend on that business to earn their living.

Being reliant means you genuinely need something or someone, even when you have other skills and abilities. A student might be reliant on their calculator for complex math problems while still understanding the concepts perfectly well. A community might be reliant on rainfall for their crops, or reliant on solar panels for electricity. The word describes a real dependence that affects what you can do.

You'll often see reliant paired with “on” or “upon”: reliant on routine, reliant upon technology, reliant on teamwork. Sometimes being reliant makes sense: babies are naturally reliant on adults for everything. But becoming overly reliant on anything can create problems. If you're too reliant on spell-check, your own spelling skills might not improve. If a country is too reliant on importing food, a shipping problem could leave people without enough to eat.

The opposite of being reliant is being self-reliant, which means depending on your own abilities and resources. Growing from reliant to self-reliant is a big part of growing up.