deviation - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle French deviation, from Medieval Latin deviatio. Morphologically deviate +‎ -ion.

deviation (countable and uncountable, plural deviations)

  1. The act of deviating; wandering off the correct or true path or road.
  2. A departure from the correct way of acting.
    • 2007, Nick Bentley, “Re-writing Englishness: imagining the nation in Julian Barnes’s England, England and Zadie Smith’s _White Teeth_”, in Textual Practice, volume 21, number 3, →DOI, pages 496–7:
      The combination of Archie Jones’s working-class, Cockney accent, Samad’s Asian-English and Clara’s Creolized Caribbean English represent socio-linguistic deviations from Standard English as the centripetal forces of language undermining any notion of a homoglossic centre to the nation’s language and culture.
  3. The state or result of having deviated; a transgression; an act of sin; an error; an offense.
    mankind’s deviation from divine will
  4. A detour in a road or railway.
    • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 21:
      "A rough place, my last district; sixty navvies on the Springbank deviation works, let alone eighty of these dole bugs to attend to."
  5. (aviation) A detour to one side of the originally-planned flightpath (for instance, to avoid weather); the act of making such a detour.
    • 1992 March 18, National Transportation Safety Board, “1.1 History of the Flight”, in Aircraft Accident Report: Explosive Decompression - Loss of Cargo Door in Flight, United Airlines Flight 811, Boeing 747-122, N4713U, Honolulu, Hawaii, February 24, 1989‎[1], page 2:
      The flightcrew observed en route thunderstorms both visually and on the airplane's weather radar, so they requested and received clearance for a deviation to the left of course from the HNL Combined Center Radar Approach Control (CERAP).
  6. (contract law) The voluntary and unnecessary departure of a ship from, or delay in, the regular and usual course of the specific voyage insured, thus releasing the underwriters from their responsibility.
  7. (Absolute Deviation) The shortest distance between the center of the target and the point where a projectile hits or bursts.
  8. (statistics) For interval variables and ratio variables, a measure of difference between the observed value and the mean.
  9. (metrology) The signed difference between a value and its reference value.

Most of the detour-related senses of deviation carry an implication of error or wrongdoing; however, the aviation sense does not.

act of deviating

state or result of having deviated

voluntary and unnecessary departure of a ship from, or delay in, the regular and usual course of the specific voyage insured

shortest distance between the center of the target and the point where a projectile hits or bursts

statistical deviation

Translations to be checked

deviation c (singular definite deviationen, plural indefinite deviationer)

  1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{[rfdef](/wiki/Template:rfdef#top "Template:rfdef")}}.