divorces

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of divorce.

   Celebrity divorces often fill the tabloid headlines for weeks at a time.

   The county court finalized two divorces that afternoon.

   Note

   The plural belongs only to divorce as a countable thing, where each case is a separate event: two divorces finalized in an afternoon, a string of celebrity divorces. When the word names the practice in general, as in divorce is rarely simple, it is uncountable and has no plural. The same spelling also serves the verb's present-tense form. In her divorces it is a tally, while in she divorces it is an action.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of divorce.

   She divorces her first husband and moves across the country to start over.

   A careful writer never divorces style from substance.

   Note

   Each shade of the verb has its own construction. Ending a marriage takes the person directly, with no preposition: she divorces her husband. The broader sense of separating connected things adds from, as in a writer who divorces style from substance. The verb can also stand without any object, meaning simply to obtain a divorce: if he divorces, he must sell the house.

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