divorce

Etymology

Derived from Old French divorce, from Latin dīvortium, from dīvertere (“to turn aside”), from dī- (“apart”) + vertere (“to turn”); see verse.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɪˈvɔːs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /dɪˈvɔɹs/
• (South Asia, also) IPA^(key): /daɪˈvəː(ɾ)s/
  • Homophone: diverse
• (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /dɪˈvo(ː)ɹs/
• (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /dɪˈvoəs/
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)s

Noun

divorce (countable and uncountable, plural divorces)

1. The legal dissolution of a marriage.

   Richard obtained a divorce from his wife some years ago, but hasn't returned to the dating scene.

2. A separation of connected things.

   The Civil War split between Virginia and West Virginia was a divorce based along cultural and economic as well as geographic lines.

   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎:

     The great trick of online retail has been to get us to do more shopping while thinking less about it – thinking less, in particular, about how our purchases reach our homes. This divorce of a product from its voyage to us is perhaps the thing that Amazon has sold us most successfully

   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 5, scene 2:

     To make divorce of their incorporate league

3. (zoology) The separation of a bonded pair of animals.
4. (obsolete) That which separates.
   • c. 1613, William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Henry VIII, act 2, scene 1:

     Go with me like good angels to my end; / And as the long divorce of steel falls on me, / Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, / And lift my soul to heaven. Lead on, o' God's name.

Verb

divorce (third-person singular simple present divorces, present participle divorcing, simple past and past participle divorced)

1. (transitive) To legally dissolve a marriage between two people.

   A ship captain can marry couples, but cannot divorce them.

2. (transitive) To end one's own marriage to (a person) in this way.

   Lucy divorced Steve when she discovered that he had been unfaithful.

3. (intransitive) To obtain a legal divorce.

   Edna and Simon divorced last year; he got the house, and she retained the business.

4. (transitive) To separate something that was connected.

   The radical group voted to divorce itself from the main faction and start an independent movement.

   • c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iv], page 269:

     He is knight dubb'd with vnhatche'd Rapier, and on carpet conſideration, but he is a diuell in priuate brall, soules and bodies hath he diuorc'd three, and his incenſement at this moment is ſo implacable, that ſatisfaction can be none, but by pangs of death and ſepulcher: Hob, nob, is his word: giu't or take't.

Anagrams

• codrive

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /di.vɔʁs/

• Audio:

  (file)

Etymology 1

Derived from Latin dīvortium.

Etymology 2

Further reading

• “divorce”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.