route

[ root, rout ]

noun

1. a course, way, or road for passage or travel:

   What's the shortest route to Boston?

2. a customary or regular line of passage or travel:

   There's a ship from our company on the North Atlantic route.

3. a specific itinerary, round, or number of stops regularly visited by a person in the performance of their work or duty:

   a newspaper route;

   a mail carrier's route.

   Synonyms: circuit, beat

verb (used with object)

, rout·ed, rout·ing.

1. to set the path of:

   to route a tour.

2. to send or forward by a particular course or road:

   It's the post office's job to route mail to its proper destination.

route

/ ruːt /

noun

1. the choice of roads taken to get to a place
2. a regular journey travelled
3. capital a main road between cities

   Route 66

4. mountaineering the direction or course taken by a climb
5. med the means by which a drug or agent is administered or enters the body, such as by mouth or by injection

   oral route

verb

1. to plan the route of; send by a particular route

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

Other Words From

• mis·route verb (used with object) misrouted misrouting
• pre·route verb (used with object) prerouted prerouting
• re·route verb rerouted rerouting

Word History and Origins

Origin of route¹

First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English: “way, course,” from Old French, from Latin rupta (via) “broken (road),” feminine past participle of rumpere “to break”; rout ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of route¹

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

Idioms and Phrases

Idioms

1. 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.

Example Sentences

It means that if the Scots are in pot three they could face a tricky route to a first World Cup in what will be 28 years by the time the tournament rolls around.

From BBC

Another neighbor drove her car directly through the Jensens property to escape the inferno, which had already blocked off the sole escape route.

From Los Angeles Times

Officials had closed two lanes, the New Zealand Herald reported, to allow them to continue along the route.

From BBC

The Dec. 1 parade will start at 6 p.m. at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles and continue for 3.2 miles along a U-shaped route.

From Los Angeles Times

T-levels were launched by the former Conservative government, which planned to make them the main route into vocational education by defunding alternative courses, like BTecs, with overlapping subject areas.

From BBC

Related Words

• transmit