Deviation

How to spell deviation

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce deviation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deviation mean?

1. nounA departure or divergence from an established course, standard, or expectation.
2. nounThe amount by which a single value differs from the mean or a reference value in a data set.

Deviation in a sentence

• Any deviation from the agreed budget had to be reported to the finance team.

• The report listed the standard deviation alongside the average test score.

• The pilot explained that bad weather forced a brief deviation from the planned route.

• A large deviation in the sample readings suggested the equipment needed recalibration.

Where does deviation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Late Latin verb deviare, meaning 'to turn off the road' or 'to wander', built from de-, meaning 'away from', and via, the ordinary Latin word for a road or way. The literal image is of someone leaving the marked highway and straying onto another path, which is exactly the sense of departing from a fixed course that survives today. The related noun deviatio appeared in medieval Latin, and English borrowed the term during the early 1600s, largely through French deviation, to describe any departure from a standard, route, or accepted norm. The same via root sits inside familiar words such as 'obvious' (literally 'in the way') and 'trivial' (from where three roads meet), and it explains the single v and the -via- spelling in the middle that writers sometimes mishear. By the nineteenth century it had also settled into a precise statistical meaning, the amount by which a value differs from a central figure.

How the word is built

• de- (away from)
• via (way, road)
• -ation (noun suffix)