Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive & transitive verb To turn aside or cause to turn aside; bend or deviate.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cause to turn aside; turn or bend from a right line or a regular course.
  • To turn away or aside; deviate from a true course or a right line; swerve.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To turn aside; to deviate from a right or a horizontal line, or from a proper position, course or direction; to swerve.
  • transitive verb To cause to turn aside; to bend.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To make (something) deviate from its original path.
  • verb intransitive To deviate from its original path.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb draw someone's attention away from something
  • verb impede the movement of (an opponent or a ball)
  • verb turn aside and away from an initial or intended course
  • verb prevent the occurrence of; prevent from happening
  • verb turn from a straight course, fixed direction, or line of interest

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin dēflectere : dē-, de- + flectere, to bend.]

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Examples

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  • T.H.E. on modular academic courses: 'I kept encountering a story about a molecular biologist who opted to spend a year at a university in California and had been deflected from his true calling into drug-driven self-destruction by taking an optional ceramics module.'

    November 6, 2008

  • House would do this a lot in order to keep Wilson from talking about his Vicodin usage or something different.

    July 26, 2012