- deviation
- I(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)Turning awayNouns — deviation; swerving, warp, refraction; deflection, declination; diversion, divergence, digression, excursion, departure from, aberration; zigzag; siding; detour, bypass, byroad, circuit; wandering; sidling, knight's move. See circuity, avoidance, obliquity, irregularity.Verbs1. deviate, alter one's course, turn off; depart from, turn, bend, curve (see curvature); swerve, heel, bear off, deflect, head off, divert [from its course], distract; put on a new scent, shift, shunt, draw aside, warp.2. stray, straggle; sidle, diverge, part, separate; jump the track; digress, divagate, wander, wind, twist, meander, roam, zigzag, veer, tack, fishtail; come round; turn aside, avert, turn a corner, turn away from; wheel, steer clear of; ramble, rove, drift; go astray, go adrift; yaw, dodge, step aside; ease off, make way for, shy; fly off at a tangent; glance off; wheel or face about; turn to the right about; go out of one's way, lose one's way or bearings.Adjectives — deviating, deviative, aberrant, errant, roundabout; excursive, discursive; devious, desultory, rambling; stray, erratic, undirected, divergent, radial, forked, centrifugal; circuitous, indirect, zigzag; crablike; off center; off one's beat, off the beaten track.Adverbs — astray from, round about, wide of the mark; to the right about, all manner of ways; circuitously; obliquely, sidling.II(Roget's IV) n.III(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun 1. A departing from what is prescribed: aberration, departure, divergence, divergency, diversion. See APPROACH, CORRECT. 2. An instance of digressing: aside, digression, divagation, divergence, divergency, excursion, excursus, irrelevancy, parenthesis, tangent. See APPROACH. 3. The condition of being abnormal: aberrance, aberrancy, aberration, abnormality, anomaly, deviance, deviancy, irregularity, preternaturalness, unnaturalness. See GOOD, USUAL.
English dictionary for students. 2013.