estrange
Americanverb (used with object)
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estranges,
present (3rd person singular)
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estranged,
past participle, past
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estranging
present participle
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to turn away in feeling or affection; make unfriendly or hostile; alienate the affections of.
Their quarrel estranged the two friends.
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to remove to or keep at a distance.
The necessity for traveling on business has estranged him from his family.
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to divert from the original use or possessor.
verb
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to separate and live apart from (one's spouse)
he is estranged from his wife
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to antagonize or lose the affection of (someone previously friendly); alienate
Synonym Usage
Estrange, alienate, disaffect share the sense of causing (someone) to turn away from a previously held state of affection, comradeship, or allegiance. Estrange often implies replacement of love or belonging by apathy or hostility: erstwhile lovers estranged by a misunderstanding. Alienate often calls attention to the cause of antagonism or separation: His inconsiderate behavior alienated both friends and family. Disaffect usually refers to relationships involving allegiance or loyalty rather than love or affection: disaffected workers, demoralized by ill-considered management policies.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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estrangesimple
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estrangessimple
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have estrangedperfect
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has estrangedperfect
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am estrangingprogressive
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are estrangingprogressive
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is estrangingprogressive
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have been estrangingperfect progressive
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has been estrangingperfect progressive
Past
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estrangedsimple
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had estrangedperfect
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was estrangingprogressive
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were estrangingprogressive
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had been estrangingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of estrange
First recorded in 1475–85; from Middle French, Old French estranger; cognate with Portuguese estranhar, Spanish estrañar, Italian straniare, from Medieval Latin extrāneāre “to treat as a stranger,” derivative of Latin extrāneus “external, foreign, strange”; see extraneous
Explanation
To estrange people may sound like adding wobbly antennae and an extra eyeball to their faces. Really, estrange means to push apart people who were once close to each other and cause them to be like strangers. The verb estrange comes from the Old French estranger, "to treat like a stranger.” Estrange is often used when talking about family members who are no longer in contact with each other. Estrange can also mean "to keep at a distance or remove." With this sense, a writer can estrange readers by using too many big words your can talk about wanting to estrange the neighbor’s dog from your flowerbed. If you're looking for a synonym that is less “strange” but more “alien,” try alienate.
Vocabulary lists containing estrange
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Born a Crime
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"The Iliad" by Homer, Book 1
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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:
Research shows that adults who estrange themselves from relatives often do so "with a great amount of care and consideration over time," she says.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
Translation was for him a ferrying across borders and a way of hearing one language estrange another.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026
Novey transports us toward two reckonings: what exactly happened to estrange the women and, later, how Leah will respond to Jean’s legacy of sculptures.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 13, 2023
García's film is about fathers and sons, and it certainly tackles the thorniness that can estrange children and their parents.
From Salon ● Oct. 21, 2022
I estrange myself from the Baron, lest I should be too partial to the numerous good qualities I cannot but see, and yet which it would be dangerous to contemplate too often.
From The Sylph, Volume I and II by Georgiana Cavendish
She transforms herself from “a wild, hatless little savage” into a lady, which estranges her from her childhood companion and besotted admirer, Heathcliff, a foundling who lives with her family.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2026
Ultimately, this thing is just another machine that estranges us from the ingredients that make up the food and drinks that we consume.
From Slate ● Nov. 15, 2018
He performs a vital service that nonetheless estranges him from the very people he’s duty-bound to defend, placeless in his own domain.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 26, 2018
Meekness, he said, “enables us to set aside everything that divides and estranges us, and to find ever new ways to advance along the path of unity.”
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 1, 2016
But it is not a rare thing with us that one estranges or alienates another's man-servant or maid-servant, or entices them away by flattering words.
From Martin Luther's Large Catechism, translated by Bente and Dau by F. (Friedrich) Bente
When Robin Brill walked into a conference for estranged parents this summer in Chicago, she was stunned by the crowd.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026
While Tomlinson remains close with some of her mother’s relatives, she has been estranged from her father for five years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026
Maintaining an openness to people — and a willingness to strengthen connections with everyone from distant or estranged family members to friends, acquaintances and strangers — enables you to benefit from more social interaction.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 18, 2026
Murrell - the estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon - was due to appear at the High Court in Edinburgh on Monday for Crown lawyers to attempt to recover the money he embezzled.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026
Chris Langan’s mother was from San Francisco and was estranged from her family.
From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
By estranging me from the world, derealization, paradoxically, makes it more real.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 14, 2022
Though the situation’s murky, the syntax estranging, the form itself is familiar, for most of the book: left-justified lines, grouped into stanzas.
From New York Times ● Mar. 3, 2020
“Financial derivatives are more cognitively estranging than pennies. Global climate change is more cognitively estranging than yesterday’s local weather.”
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 6, 2019
That’s the disillusioned soul of the film, entrenching it within the cynicism of the 90s and estranging it from the hopeful revisionism of modern discourse.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 23, 2019
Here again we encounter one of the complementary relationships so frequently met with; it is, to be sure, the most estranging of all those we have become acquainted with.
From A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
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.
