Divorce: The Legal End of a Marriage, and Any Clean Break

A divorce ends a marriage in law, which is what separates it from simply living apart. Beyond the courtroom, English uses the word for any split that ought not to have happened: policy divorced from reality, a price divorced from value. Its Latin root means to turn away in different directions, the same root that gives us *divert* and *diverse*.

• The legal ending of a marriage. *They filed for divorce.*
• To end a marriage legally. *She divorced him in 2019.*
• To separate two things that belong together. *Art cannot be divorced from its history.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• The couple divorced after twelve years.Divorce can take no object when both people are the subject.
• She is divorced from her first husband.Divorced from is the usual phrasing about a specific person.
• The plan is completely divorced from the budget.The figurative use, always with from.

Words that are near it but not it

• Separation — living apart, sometimes formally, but still married
• Annulment — a ruling that the marriage was never valid
• Dissolution — the technical term for ending a marriage or civil partnership
• Estranged — no longer close, said of couples and of families
• Alimony / maintenance — payments after a divorce, the American and British terms

From Old French *divorce*, from Latin *divortium*, from *divertere*, to turn aside, made of *dis* (apart) and *vertere* (to turn). The idea in the Latin is two roads leaving the same point.