Deferment and forbearance will allow you to temporarily stop having payments or give you a temporary reduction of your monthly payment for a specific period. The difference between deferment and forbearance is in deferment, you may not accountable for paying the interest on certain types of loans during the period of deferment.
During this period, you are not responsible for the direct subsidized loans, subsidized portion of direct consolidation loans, and federal Perkins loans. During a forbearance, however, you are responsible for paying all of the interest that accrues on all federal students loans types. This should also be paid on a regular basis as it will add up and will take you longer to fully pay on it.
In the dictionary, if you looked up forbearance, you would recognize that it is a noun. The same can be said for deferment. They are both the same part of speech, nouns. However, the meanings and usage of these words can be different. Forbearance means to be patient and execute some form of self-control.
For example, if you wanted to eat a piece of cake that had a lot of fat and calories in it, you may need to execute some forbearance to save the calories for healthy foods. Deferment means to postpone something. It may or may not be done as a result of self-control. Instead, a delay like a pay deferment implies that you will wait a little while to make a payment.