Diversion

How to spell diversion

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce diversion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diversion mean?

1. nounSomething that draws attention away from what is really happening or from the main matter.
2. nounA temporary alternative route used when the usual road is closed.
3. nounAn activity that provides amusement or relaxation from routine.

Diversion in a sentence

• The noise outside was a useful diversion while she slipped the documents into her bag.

• Roadworks on the motorway forced a long diversion through the village.

• After a tense week at work, gardening became her favourite diversion.

• The magician created a diversion with his left hand while the trick happened in his right.

• The council signposted a clearly marked diversion around the flooded bridge.

• The long train journey called for some light diversion, so he packed a novel and a crossword.

Where does diversion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb divertere, which combined dis- in the sense of 'aside' with vertere 'to turn', so the literal idea was 'to turn aside' or 'to turn in different directions'. From the past participle stem came the late Latin diversio, a noun describing the act of turning away, and English picked the word up in the early 1600s by way of French. Its earliest English uses were military and practical, meaning a manoeuvre that drew an enemy's attention away from the real target, and from that came the everyday sense of anything that distracts or entertains. The same vertere root, meaning 'to turn', runs through a large family of relatives such as convert, reverse, version and divert, which is why the spelling keeps the tell-tale -vers- before the ending. The trap for writers is the close of the word: it ends in -sion, not -tion, a pattern shared by other vertere words like version and conversion.

How the word is built

• di- (variant of dis-: aside, apart)
• vers (from vertere: to turn)
• -ion (noun of action)