divorce

Pluraldivorces

Formsdivorces, divorcing, divorced

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The legal dissolution of a marriage by a court.

   The couple's divorce was finalized after months of negotiation.

   Changes in the law have made divorce easier to obtain in many states.

   Similardissolution, separation, breakup, split

   Oppositemarriage

   Note

   Behind the legal term lies a picture of motion: Latin dīvortium, from dīvertere, "to turn aside," built from dī- "apart" and vertere "to turn," the root also behind verse. The noun counts both ways. A particular case is a divorce, which one obtains from a spouse (he obtained a divorce from his wife). The institution itself takes no article (divorce became easier to obtain).

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To legally end one's marriage to a particular person.

   Many people who divorce their spouses still remain on friendly terms.

   She divorced her husband after discovering his secret debts.

   Oppositemarry, wed

3. 3
   verbintransitive

   To obtain a legal divorce, ending one's marriage through the courts.

   The couple divorced quietly, avoiding any public attention.

   In some countries it is still difficult for women to divorce.

   Similarseparate, split

   Oppositemarry, wed

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To legally end the marriage uniting two people, as by a court's decree.

   The court divorced them in under a month.

   Historically, only Parliament could divorce a married couple.

   Oppositemarry, wed

   Note

   Here the subject is the authority, not either spouse: a court divorces a couple, just as an official marries one. Compare divorcing one's own spouse, where a husband or wife is the subject, and the intransitive use, where the couple simply divorced. The ship captain who can marry couples but cannot divorce them shows the pattern neatly.

5. 5
   nounusually singular

   A separation or split between things that were once joined or closely connected.

   Critics noted the divorce between the company's stated values and its actions.

   The film explores the divorce of art from commercial pressures.

   Similarseparation, split, disconnection, gap, gulf

   Oppositeunion, connection

   Note

   The figurative split has been in English at least since Shakespeare's Henry V (c. 1599), which speaks of making "divorce of their incorporate league." It usually takes of … from, as in Samanth Subramanian's 2019 phrase "this divorce of a product from its voyage to us," or between when both sides are named together. Either way it implies the two belonged together first, which gives it more edge than plain separation.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To separate one thing from another to which it was joined or connected.

   You cannot divorce a writer's words from the times in which they lived.

   The new policy divorced funding decisions from political influence.

   Similarseparate, detach, disconnect, isolate, divide

   Oppositeconnect, join, link, unite

   Note

   The general transitive verb is usually built as divorce X from Y, and it is often reflexive: a group divorces itself from a faction. Shakespeare stretches it to the grimmest separation in Twelfth Night, where a duelist has divorced "souls and bodies" three times, meaning he has killed three men. In modern prose it suits ideas and institutions, as in divorcing policy from politics.

7. 7
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The breakup of a mated animal pair that had previously bonded together.

   Albatross colonies show very low rates of divorce between mated partners.

   Researchers linked the pair's divorce to a poor breeding season.

   Similarseparation, breakup, split

   Note

   Zoologists borrowed the human word for a specific event: a mated pair separates while both partners are alive, and one or both go on to form new bonds. That sets it apart from a pair broken by death. In behavioral ecology it is measured as a rate across a population. Low rates tend to go with successful breeding, which is why a failed season is often studied as a cause.

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