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; to err; to digress; to diverge; to vary. Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, May boldly deviate from the common track. Pope.

To deviate or incline from an angle of 90 Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevel. Swift.

To cause to deviate from straightness; to bend; to inflect; to make crooked or curved. We bow things the contrary way, to make them come to their natural straightness. Milton. The whole nation bowed their necks to the worst kind of tyranny. Prescott.

Any part of a rampart or parapet which deviates from the general direction.

To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw; as, a line that declines from straightness; conduct that declines from sound morals. Yet do I not decline from thy testimonies. Ps. cxix. 157.

To turn aside; to deviate from a right or a horizontal line, or from a proper position, course or direction; to swerve. At some part of the Azores, the needle deflecteth not, but lieth in the true meridian. Sir T. Browne. To deflect from the line of truth and reason. Warburton.

Causing deflection. Deflective forces, forces that cause a body to deviate from its course.

To forsake; to abandon; to desist or deviate (from); not to adhere to; -- with from; as, we can not depart from our rules; to depart from a title or defense in legal pleading. If the plan of the convention be found to depart from republican principles. Madison.

The state or result of having deviated; a transgression; an act of sin; an error; an offense.

One who, or that which, deviates.

Tending to deviate; devious; as, deviatory motion. [R.] Tully.

To step or turn aside; to deviate; to swerve; especially, to turn aside from the main subject of attention, or course of argument, in writing or speaking. Moreover she beginneth to digress in latitude. Holland. In the pursuit of an argument there is hardly room to digress into a particular definition as often as a man…

tend from one point and recede from each other; to tend to spread apart; to turn aside or deviate (as from a given direction); -- opposed to converge; as, rays of light diverge as they proceed from the sun.

One who, or that which, deviates from regularity; an anomalous or irregular person or thing.

g the results of mere experience or his own observation; especially, in medicine, one who deviates from the rules of science and regular practice; an ignorant and unlicensed pretender; a quack; a charlatan. Among the Greek physicians, those who founded their practice on experience called themselves empirics. Krauth-Fle…

To deviate from the true course; to miss the thing aimed at. "My jealous aim might err." Shak.

One who deviates from common and accepted opinions; one who is eccentric or preserve in his intellectual character.

To go out of the track; to deviate. [Obs.] Bentley.

e or the review falls off. "O Hamlet, what a falling off was there!" Shak. (g) (Naut.) To deviate or trend to the leeward of the point to which the head of the ship was before directed; to fall to leeward. -- To fall on. (a) To meet with; to light upon; as, we have fallen on evil days. (b) To begin suddenly and eagerl…

hich grows on plowed land. Shak. -- To draw a straight furrow, to live correctly; not to deviate from the right line of duty. Lowell.