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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

divorce.

The legal dissolution of a marriage.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/dɪˈvɔːs/Received-Pronunciation/-voəs/Received-Pronunciation/dɪˈvoɹs/Canada, US/-vo(ː)ɹs/Canada, US
  1. The legal dissolution of a marriage.

    countable · uncountable
    Richard obtained a divorce from his wife some years ago, but hasn't returned to the dating scene.
  2. A separation of connected things.

    countable · uncountable
    The Civil War split between Virginia and West Virginia was a divorce based along cultural and economic as well as geographic lines.
  3. The separation of a bonded pair of animals.

    countable · uncountable
  4. That which separates.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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

verb/dɪˈvɔːs/Received-Pronunciation/-voəs/Received-Pronunciation/dɪˈvoɹs/Canada, US/-vo(ː)ɹs/Canada, US
  1. To legally dissolve a marriage between two people.

    transitive
    A ship captain can marry couples, but cannot divorce them.
  2. To end one's own marriage to (a person) in this way.

    transitive
    Lucy divorced Steve when she discovered that he had been unfaithful.
  3. To obtain a legal divorce.

    intransitive
    Edna and Simon divorced last year; he got the house, and she retained the business.
  4. To separate something that was connected.

    transitive
    The radical group voted to divorce itself from the main faction and start an independent movement.
Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.