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divergence

UK/daɪˈvɜː(ɹ)d͡ʒəns/US/daɪˈvɜː(ɹ)d͡ʒəns/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,388 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: divergences

A divergence is a moving apart of things that were once together. A growing divergence.

It implies a shared starting point, which is what separates it from a difference. Divergence between two figures that should match is the first sign of an error somewhere.

Definitions of divergence

  1. 1noundivergenceA moving apart of things that were once together.C1

    “The divergence between the two accounts widened after the first year.”

divergence is a separation.

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    dī-

  2. Medieval Latin

    dīvergō — bend away from, go in a different direction

  3. English

    diverge

  4. English, today

    divergence

Built from

  • vergō · Latin — bend

by surface analysis, diverge + -ence. diverge comes 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

divergence in the wild

  • The divergence of the velocity field in that region would thus have a positive value.

    Divergence

  • While the air is cooled and thus contracting, the divergence of the velocity has a negative value.

    Divergence

  • KL divergence is always a non-negative real number, with value 0 if and only if the two distributions in question are identical.

    Kullback–Leibler divergence

  • Estimates of the divergence date vary widely from thirteen to five million years ago.

    Chimpanzee–human last common ancestor

  • In information geometry, a divergence is a kind of statistical distance: a binary function which establishes the separation from one probability distribution to another on a statistical manifold.

    Divergence (statistics)

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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

divergencediverge

divergence — used about once every 54,060 pages · #14,388 · point at the bar for the others