departure

Noun

departure (countable and uncountable, plural departures)

1. The act of departing or something that has departed.
   • The departure was scheduled for noon.
   • The departure was not unduly prolonged. In the road Mr. Love and the driver favoured the company with a brief chanty running: “Got it?—No, I ain't, 'old on,—Got it? Got it?—No, 'old on sir.”1921, Ben Travers, chapter 5, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC
2. A deviation from a plan or procedure.
   • any departure from a national standard1855–1858, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, →OCLC
   • There are several significant departures, however, from current practice.
3. (euphemistic) A death.
   • The time of my departure is at hand.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 2 Timothy 4:6
   • His timely departure […] barred him from the knowledge of his son's miseries.a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the folio)”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London...
4. (navigation) The distance due east or west made by a ship in its course reckoned in plane sailing as the product of the distance sailed and the sine of the angle made by the course with the meridian.
5. The difference in easting between the two ends of a line or curve.
   • The area is computed by latitudes and departures.
6. The desertion by a party to any pleading of the ground taken by him in his last antecedent pleading, and the adoption of another
7. (obsolete) Division; separation; putting away.
   • no other remedy […] but absolute departure1644, John Milton, Areopagitica; a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England, London: [s.n.], →OCLC