Definitions

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

  • noun A road, course, or way for travel from one place to another.
  • noun A highway.
  • noun A fixed course or territory assigned to a salesperson or delivery person.
  • noun A means of reaching a goal.
  • noun Football A pass pattern.
  • transitive verb To send or forward by a specific route. synonym: send.
  • transitive verb To schedule the order of (a sequence of procedures).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An order for a route march.
  • To determine the route or line of transportation or travel of (goods, immigrants, etc.).
  • noun A way; road; path; space for passage.
  • noun A way or course of transit; a line of travel, passage, or progression; the course passed or to be passed over in reaching a destination, or (by extension) an object or a purpose; as a legal or engineering term, the horizontal direction along and near the surface of the earth of a way or course, as a road, a railway, or a canal, occupied or to be occupied for travel.
  • noun An obsolete form of rout, rout, rout, rout.

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

  • noun The course or way which is traveled or passed, or is to be passed; a passing; a course; a road or path; a march.

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

  • noun A course or way which is traveled or passed.
  • noun A regular itinerary of stops, or the path followed between these stops, such as for delivery or passenger transportation.
  • noun A road or path; often specifically a highway.
  • noun this sense?) (figuratively) One of multiple methods or approaches to doing something.
  • verb To direct or divert along a particular course.
  • verb Internet to connect two local area networks, thereby forming an internet

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

  • verb divert in a specified direction
  • noun an established line of travel or access
  • verb send via a specific route
  • noun an open way (generally public) for travel or transportation
  • verb send documents or materials to appropriate destinations

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin rupta (via), broken (road), feminine past participle of rumpere, to break; see rout.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French route, rote (French: route) “road, way, path” (source: route on Etymonline)

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Examples

Comments

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  • See this map for American pronunciation.

    April 11, 2008

  • This is the first word I searched for after becoming a new member of wordnik. (My uncle 15 generations removed was Noah Webster). I wanted to see how wordnik pronounced "route". I was delighted to see that you only pronounce it the correct way, namely rut (root), even though many people, including those in the media, mispronounce it "rout".

    Perhaps you could add "common mispronunciations" to wordnik as a gentle nudge to improving our language skills.

    I enjoyed learning about wordnik through the article on Erin McKean's efforts in the March 16 issue of The Christian Science Monitor.

    Thanks, and happy wording!

    Robert W. Barnes, M.D. F.A.C.S.

    Professor Emeritus of Surgery

    University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

    Manager, Beaverfork A-V Studio, LLC

    7 Beaverfork Place

    Conway, AR 72032-8203

    Telephone: 501-730-0660

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    April 2, 2009