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definitions

route

[ root, rout ]
/ rut, raʊt /
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noun

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: a ship on the North Atlantic route.
a specific itinerary, round, or number of stops regularly visited by a person in the performance of his or her work or duty: a newspaper route; a mail carrier's route.

verb (used with object), rout·ed, rout·ing.

to fix the route of: to route a tour.
to send or forward by a particular route: to route mail to its proper destination.

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RELATED WORDS

program, direction, way, course, track, passage, trail, journey, itinerary, line, avenue, road, transmit, pike, digression, run, meandering, rambling, plot, beat

Nearby words

  1. roussillon,
  2. roust,
  3. roustabout,
  4. rouster,
  5. rout,
  6. route 128,
  7. route march,
  8. route one,
  9. route survey,
  10. routeman

Idioms

    go the route, Informal.
    1. to see something through to completion: It was a tough assignment, but he went the route.
    2. Baseball.to pitch the complete game: The heat and humidity were intolerable, but the pitcher managed to go the route.

Origin of route

1175–1225; Middle English: way, course < Old French < Latin rupta (via) broken (road), feminine past participle of rumpere to break; cf. rout1
Related formsmis·route, verb (used with object), mis·rout·ed, mis·rout·ing.pre·route, verb (used with object), pre·rout·ed, pre·rout·ing.re·route, verb, re·rout·ed, re·rout·ing.
Can be confusedroot rout route
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for route

British Dictionary definitions for route

route

/ (ruːt) /

noun

the choice of roads taken to get to a place
a regular journey travelled
(capital) US a main road between citiesRoute 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 injectionoral route

verb routes, routing, routeing or routed (tr)

to plan the route of; send by a particular route

Word Origin for route

C13: from Old French rute, from Vulgar Latin rupta via (unattested), literally: a broken (established) way, from Latin ruptus broken, from rumpere to break, burst

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
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for route
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper