diverge

UK/daɪˈvɜːd͡ʒ/US/dɪˈvɝd͡ʒ/

verbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #15,011 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: diverged, diverging, diverges

To diverge is to move apart from a common point. The paths diverge.

It is used of roads, of species and of opinions, and all three start together. To diverge from a plan means departing from it rather than abandoning it.

Definitions of diverge

1verbdivergeTo move apart from a common point.C1
“The two accounts diverge after about the first ten minutes.”

diverge is a separating.

Where it comes from

Medieval Latin divergere means to bend away, from di plus vergere, to bend.

Latin
dī-
Medieval Latin
dīvergō — bend away from, go in a different direction
English, today
diverge

Built from

vergō · Latin — bend

From Medieval Latin dīvergō (“bend away from, go in a different direction”), from Latin dī- + vergō (“bend”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

diverge in the wild

Even more surprising, perhaps, the quotient of the two functions may in fact diverge, and not merely diverge to infinity.
Indeterminate form
A lunette window is commonly called a half-moon window, or a fanlight if its muntins (the bars separating its panes) diverge radially.
Lunette
A junction, in the context of rail transport, is a place at which two or more rail routes converge or diverge.
Junction (rail)
The muntin bars in the fixed glazed window diverge in the manner of sunbeams.
Fanlight
The divisions of Iceland for the purposes of health care and district courts diverge more from the commonly used eight region model.
Regions of Iceland

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the vergō family

divergence diverge

diverge — used about once every 159,543 pages · #15,011 · point at the bar for the others

divergent

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