route

A route is the particular way you go from one place to another. The route to school that goes past the bakery, the number 12 bus route, a driver taking the coast route because the motorway is jammed again.

A route is not a road. The road is the strip of tarmac; the route is the chain of roads you pick to get there. It works for anything with steps along the way: a climbing route up a cliff, a flight route, a postman's route. Say a route to something for a way of getting it — a route to citizenship, a route out of debt. There is a verb as well: to route a phone call, to route traffic around the roadworks. Pronunciation is split, with the British saying root and many Americans saying rout, and both are correct. En route, said on root, means on the way: we stopped for petrol en route.

Phrases it lives in

• en route — on the way to somewhere