detour

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a longer or less direct route taken to avoid a blockage or reach a place indirectly

   Road repairs forced us to take a ten-mile detour.

2. 2
   noun

   a temporary departure from a planned course, subject, or activity

   The discussion took a useful detour into the history of the law.

3. 3
   verb

   to travel by a longer or indirect route

   We detoured around the flooded bridge and rejoined the highway farther north.

Borrowed from French detour, from detourner, "to turn aside," built from de- + tourner, "to turn." The travel sense came first in English; the figurative sense treats a departure from a subject or plan as an indirect route.

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