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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

routine.

A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɹuːˈtiːn/Received-Pronunciation/ɹuˈtin/General-American
  1. A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure.

    countable · uncountable
  2. A set of normal procedures, often performed mechanically.

    countable · uncountable
    Connie was completely robotic and emotionless by age 12; her entire life had become one big routine.
  3. A set piece of an entertainer's act.

    countable · uncountable
    stand-up comedy routine
  4. A performance, execution of gymnastics for one of the apparatus.

    countable · uncountable
  5. A set of instructions designed to perform a specific task; a subroutine.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Unadapted borrowing from French routine. By surface analysis, route + -ine. Further from Latin rupta via. Compare typologically travel << Latin tripālium, whence also travail, note the inverse semantic vector from a subjective state (toil) to an objective action (journey). Also compare Czech běžný (< běžet), Russian обихо́д (obixód), обихо́дный (obixódnyj) (akin to ходи́ть (xodítʹ)).

adj/ɹuːˈtiːn/Received-Pronunciation/ɹuˈtin/General-American
  1. According to established procedure.

  2. Regular; habitual.

  3. Ordinary with nothing to distinguish it from all the others.

  4. Boringly predictable, monotonous, and unchanging

    I found the work pretty routine.
Where this word comes from

Unadapted borrowing from French routine. By surface analysis, route + -ine. Further from Latin rupta via. Compare typologically travel << Latin tripālium, whence also travail, note the inverse semantic vector from a subjective state (toil) to an objective action (journey). Also compare Czech běžný (< běžet), Russian обихо́д (obixód), обихо́дный (obixódnyj) (akin to ходи́ть (xodítʹ)).

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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.