route
Americannoun
-
routes
plural
-
a course, way, or road for passage or travel.
What's the shortest route to Boston?
-
a customary or regular line of passage or travel.
There's a ship from our company on the North Atlantic route.
-
a specific itinerary, round, or number of stops regularly visited by a person in the performance of their work or duty.
a newspaper route;
a mail carrier's route.
verb (used with object)
-
routes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
routed,
past participle, past
-
routing
present participle
-
to set the path of.
to route a tour.
-
to send or forward by a particular course or road.
It's the post office's job to route mail to its proper destination.
idioms
noun
-
the choice of roads taken to get to a place
-
a regular journey travelled
-
(capital) a main road between cities
Route 66
-
mountaineering the direction or course taken by a climb
-
med the means by which a drug or agent is administered or enters the body, such as by mouth or by injection
oral route
verb
Usage
When forming the present participle or verbal noun from the verb to route it is preferable to retain the e in order to distinguish the word from routing , the present participle or verbal noun from rout 1 , to defeat or rout 2 , to dig, rummage: the routeing of buses from the city centre to the suburbs . The spelling routing in this sense is, however, sometimes encountered, esp in American English
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
routesimple
-
routessimple
-
have routedperfect
-
has routedperfect
-
am routingprogressive
-
are routingprogressive
-
is routingprogressive
-
have been routingperfect progressive
-
has been routingperfect progressive
Past
-
routedsimple
-
had routedperfect
-
was routingprogressive
-
were routingprogressive
-
had been routingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of route
First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English: “way, course,” from Old French, from Latin rupta (via) “broken (road),” feminine past participle of rumpere “to break”; cf. rout 1
Explanation
A route is a way for travel or movement, the path from point A to point B. A route can also be the method used for achieving a particular result, like going to school and working hard is your route to success. Route comes from an Old French word, rute, “road,” “way,” or “path” and the Latin rupta, “broken way” or “beaten way.” A route can be a highway, like Route 66, or all the places you pass through on the way somewhere, like using a map to find the shortest route. As a verb, route means "to send people or things on a particular course," like detour signs that route you through unfamiliar streets or a package that is routed through Cleveland on its way to you.
Vocabulary lists containing route
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Make a Break for It: Rupt
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American Football, 1st Quarter
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In a debate on 29 September, Deputy Transport Minister Mark Hooper said the black route was not achievable.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
Police also banned a major march through the heart of the capital and negotiations with organisers over an alternative route failed to reach agreement.
From Barron's ● Oct. 16, 2026
The route also utilizes the state highway system, including Interstate 110 and Interstate 710.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026
The clearest route to shareholder gains would be lower costs for serving existing customers.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026
A sagging old chain-link fence behind the tire shop was the only escape route.
From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste
In 2018, data published by Strava made it possible to identify military sites and soldiers' routes, notably in Afghanistan and Syria.
From Barron's ● Oct. 17, 2026
Globalization is unwinding, and competition over natural resources, trade routes and technology are taking its place.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026
Community members are concerned the closure will increase traffic in residential areas not along the designated detour routes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026
“Looking at Paris in terms of how dogs use it, their routes, and their needs also means asking ourselves very practical questions about how we share public space,” Bouderbala, 31, added.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
“When it’s time to bail, there are nontraditional routes that most people don’t know. They won’t be gridlocked like the freeways.”
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
The airline previously routed it frequently through Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 11, 2026
They also routed water to 350 acres of new earthen basins.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 26, 2026
Large amounts of crypto were being routed from OKX to a group of anonymous wallets, investigators found.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026
Players slept at a hotel, got up the next day and routed the Jacksonville Jaguars, 35-7.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
A call coming from California would be routed first to Phoenix, I think, or somewhere in Nevada.
From "The Brightwood Code" by Monica Hesse
Over the last several years, work crews there have been restoring natural floodplains along rivers and creeks, building recharge basins, and routing floodwater to farm fields where it can soak into the land.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 26, 2026
Ocean carriers are routing away from the Panama Canal because of draft restrictions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
Now, they hand the work to a program that breaks the task into steps, tests each one and retries what failed — routing through several models that are each billed separately.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 3, 2026
The attack affected the communication operations of the fire and police departments, including the routing of 911 calls.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 2026
I have thrown this routing in as a sop and shall not make a habit of it.
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
