as in aside
a departure from the subject under consideration
in the middle of her description of her dog's symptoms, she went off on a tangent about its cute behavior
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
as in tangential
Related Words
Dissimilar Words
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
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Recent Examples of tangent
Darren Franich, EW.com, 19 Aug. 2022
Austin’s former president then went on a tangent talking about Reese’s eggs, Cap’n Crunch and berries.
—Frank Pallotta, CNN, 17 Apr. 2022
Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 16 Sep. 2025
This sounds like something out of the mouth of a Quentin Tarantino character on a brilliant, oddball tangent.
—Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for tangent
Noun
An early tangent veers into naval warfare, with various forces fighting for crucial shipping lanes.
—Darren Franich, EW.com, 19 Aug. 2022
Austin’s former president then went on a tangent talking about Reese’s eggs, Cap’n Crunch and berries.
—Frank Pallotta, CNN, 17 Apr. 2022
Adjective
An early tangent leads us on a 12-minute detour talking about Bob Dylan.
—Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 16 Sep. 2025
This sounds like something out of the mouth of a Quentin Tarantino character on a brilliant, oddball tangent.
—Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for tangent
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tangent
Noun
-
Such breezy asides suggest a movie that’s a little too eager to be liked.—
Ben Kenigsberg,
New York Times,
16 Oct. 2025
-
No one is better built than Leavy, a crafty veteran sportswriter, for between-innings repartee, wry asides, and tossed-off ideas for improving her beloved sport—and maybe even keeping its ever-looming obsolescence at bay for another decade or three.—
Mark Leibovich,
The Atlantic,
8 Oct. 2025
Adjective
-
Florida teachers are facing investigations for social media posts deemed insensitive after Charlie Kirk’s death — scrutiny that the state’s teachers union says targets even tangential or indirect comments.—
Miami Herald,
Miami Herald,
14 Oct. 2025
-
With astrometry, instead of measuring the radial motion of a star, astronomers measure its tangential motion on the sky as it is pulled in different directions by orbiting planets.—
Keith Cooper,
Space.com,
8 Oct. 2025
Noun
-
But in the small areas of freedom McAvoy allows himself outside the main thrust of the familiar rags-to-riches-to-regret arc there are sharp little digressions and darker shadowy corners that suggest there’s more to the film, and to McAvoy as a filmmaker, than initially meets the eye.—
Jessica Kiang,
Variety,
4 Oct. 2025
-
There's no explicit in-game reward for almost all of these random digressions, and your fellow cut-scene hikers will frequently explicitly warn you that there's no point in climbing some structure or another.—
ArsTechnica,
ArsTechnica,
23 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Its six LEDs combine three narrow beams with three wide ones at a 23-degree angle, casting a 1,300-lumen punch that lights up about 390 feet (120 m) downrange while still keeping your peripheral lit.—
Joe Salas
October 09,
New Atlas,
9 Oct. 2025
-
The trio had, in research dating back two decades, uncovered a key pathway the body uses to keep the immune system in check, called peripheral immune tolerance.—
Jessica Coacci,
Fortune,
8 Oct. 2025
Adjective
-
Gestures, colloquialisms, facial expressions, local cuisine, and the like are not incidental to a tongue but constitute it; sometimes, to capture a word or phrase, in writing or in an algorithm, is to stamp out its meaning.—
Matteo Wong,
The Atlantic,
16 Oct. 2025
-
Unlike nihilism, with which cosmicism shares some similarities, the focus is on how small and incidental humanity is.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
14 Oct. 2025
Adjective
-
Because really, what the adoption is and what other people do is somewhat irrelevant.—
Jackie Charniga,
USA Today,
13 Oct. 2025
-
But the winds of college football are demanding a change to a program that is quickly becoming irrelevant in the post-expansion Big Ten.—
Jordan Sigler,
MSNBC Newsweek,
12 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Tangent.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tangent. Accessed 20 Oct. 2025.
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