diverge
Americanverb (used without object)
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to move, lie, or extend in different directions from a common point; branch off.
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to differ in opinion, character, form, etc.; deviate.
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Mathematics. (of a sequence, series, etc.) to have no unique limit; to have infinity as a limit.
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to turn aside or deviate, as from a path, practice, or plan.
verb (used with object)
verb
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to separate or cause to separate and go in different directions from a point
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(intr) to be at variance; differ
our opinions diverge
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(intr) to deviate from a prescribed course
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(intr) maths (of a series or sequence) to have no limit
Synonym Usage
See deviate.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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divergesimple
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divergessimple
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have divergedperfect
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has divergedperfect
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am divergingprogressive
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are divergingprogressive
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is divergingprogressive
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have been divergingperfect progressive
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has been divergingperfect progressive
Past
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divergedsimple
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had divergedperfect
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was divergingprogressive
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were divergingprogressive
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had been divergingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of diverge
First recorded in 1655–65; from Medieval Latin dīvergere, from Latin dī- di- 2 + vergere “to incline”
Explanation
When two roads diverge, they split and go in different directions. If your opinion diverges from mine, we do not agree. To diverge means to move apart or be separate. The poet, Robert Frost, wrote: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -/ I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference." The word diverge in the poem carries both the meaning of separating and of being apart from the main. As a poet, it was Frost's job to use words properly. Here he does not diverge from this role.
Vocabulary lists containing diverge
List 2
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Twelve Angry Men
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"The Road Not Taken"
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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:
Or are they simply the result of the random loss of gene variants as populations become isolated and slowly diverge over time?
From Science Daily ● Jun. 24, 2026
“If the vote were to end in a tie, Deputy Governor Himino, acting as chair, would make the deciding call—but his decision would not diverge from Governor Ueda’s intentions,” JPMorgan’s Ayako Fujita said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Ministers gathered for a digital G7 meeting in Paris Friday, with host France expecting they will find common ground on online child protection but diverge over the environmental impact of computing.
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
While both governments oppose what they view as "Western hegemony", their approaches to this can diverge.
From BBC ● May 18, 2026
Not only did variation and dip diverge from place to place, but in 1634 a group of English experimenters claimed that variation fluctuated over time.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
The Bank of England’s decision aligns with the Federal Reserve but diverges from the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan.
From Barron's ● Jun. 17, 2026
Norton, the showrunner of Netflix’s “Finding Her Edge,” said much of that show’s plot diverges from Jennifer Iacopelli’s novel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2026
Campbell makes the point “when the physical diverges so sharply from the paper like this, one of them is wrong and historically, it’s not physical.”
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 29, 2025
For lawmakers, the effort diverges from much of the past two decades, when billions of dollars flowed into China’s tech sector from U.S. venture-capital firms, pension funds and endowments.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 19, 2025
After passing around the point of this angelic ridge, the road diverges to the westward from Snake River and passes over some high, bald ridges separating it from Burnt River.
From Memoirs of Orange Jacobs by Jacobs, Orange
If their views diverged, they listened to each other instead of silently preparing a counterargument.
From Salon ● Jul. 5, 2026
The framework follows genome evolution across three broad stages: before ancestral species diverged, during their separate evolutionary histories, and after their genomes merged.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 19, 2026
But economists diverged when it came to the question that worries many Americans the most: in the coming years, will AI eliminate more jobs than it adds?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2026
As a result, performance has diverged sharply between well-located trophy assets with strong tenants and older, less-competitive buildings.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
The facts on the ground in the housing market diverged further and further from the prices on the bonds and the insurance on the bonds.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
If I were on patrol to figure out where online subcultures were diverging from political reality, I’d start there.
From Slate ● Jul. 14, 2026
A private gauge showed China’s manufacturing activity grew at a slower pace in June due to tapered factory production, diverging from a pickup shown in a competing index.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
“We are concerned that housing demand and supply are set on diverging courses,” a team of analysts led by Ivy Zelman wrote in a 2021 examination of demographic trends.
From Barron's ● Jun. 28, 2026
To prevent prices of perpetual futures from diverging too dramatically from the spot price of the underlying asset, perpetual futures traded on exchanges like Hyperliquid rely on a mechanism called funding rates.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 5, 2026
The Line isn’t a single line but many, diverging and intersecting.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
