divorce
1 Americannoun
-
the act of legally ending a marriage.
After the divorce, they shared custody of the children.
-
any formal separation of spouses according to established custom.
-
the act of legally ending a formal contract before its term is up, especially in professional sports.
If there’s a personality clash between the player and the manager, divorce may be the only way out.
It’s a guide to corporate divorce, laying out who pays what to whom at the early termination of a contract.
-
a total separation between two things; disunion.
Activists denounced the divorce between thought and action when it came to protecting human rights.
verb (used with object)
-
to legally end the marriage contract between oneself and (one's spouse).
She divorced her husband.
-
to permanently separate (a couple) through a judicial declaration that ends their marriage contract.
The judge divorced the couple.
-
to separate or cut off.
His view of the situation has become totally divorced from reality.
- Synonyms:
- disjoin, detach, sever, disconnect, divide, dissociate, rupture, disjunction, dissolution, breakup, annulment
verb (used without object)
noun
noun
-
the dissolution of a marriage by judgment of a court or by accepted custom
-
a judicial decree declaring a marriage to be dissolved
-
a separation, esp one that is total or complete
verb
-
to separate or be separated by divorce; give or obtain a divorce (to a couple or from one's spouse)
-
(tr) to remove or separate, esp completely
noun
Gender
See fiancée.
Other Word Forms
- divorceable adjective
- divorcer noun
- divorcive adjective
- nondivorced adjective
- undivorceable adjective
- undivorced adjective
Etymology
Origin of divorce1
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin dīvortium “separation,” from dīvort(ere) variant of dīvertere “to turn away” ( divert ) + -ium -ium
Origin of divorcé2
First recorded in 1805–15; from French, noun use of masculine past participle of divorcer, from Medieval Latin dīvortiāre “to divorce,” derivative of Latin dīvortium “separation”; divorce
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"It wasn't until I was going through a divorce that I started therapy," he said.
From BBC
They divorced soon after and his father moved to Niagara Falls, N.Y., to oversee the construction of the Skylon Tower, which was financed in part by his Hershey shareholdings.
Mr. Smith attributes the long gap between books to the depression brought on by his divorce from his first wife and his subsequent return to school to become a psychotherapist.
I give them an option at the end that I call “divorce.”
Employees might see it as a privacy violation if you use information about their health designation, a difficult divorce or another sensitive matter, DeJeu says.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
