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
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of tangent
Jessica Riskin, The New York Review of Books, 3 Apr. 2025
Almost miraculously, a circle emerges from countless tangents.
—Jonathon Keats, Forbes.com, 28 Mar. 2025
Anatola Araba, ELLE, 1 Sep. 2022
An early tangent veers into naval warfare, with various forces fighting for crucial shipping lanes.
—Darren Franich, EW.com, 19 Aug. 2022
See All Example Sentences for tangent
Noun
Unfortunately, things go poorly—her mind meanders on tangents, thoughts fail to coalesce, words elude her.
—Jessica Riskin, The New York Review of Books, 3 Apr. 2025
Almost miraculously, a circle emerges from countless tangents.
—Jonathon Keats, Forbes.com, 28 Mar. 2025
Adjective
This imaginary friend guides him through the tangent universe, encourages him to commit a series of crimes, and ends up triggering a chain of supernatural events.
—Anatola Araba, ELLE, 1 Sep. 2022
An early tangent veers into naval warfare, with various forces fighting for crucial shipping lanes.
—Darren Franich, EW.com, 19 Aug. 2022
See All Example Sentences for tangent
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tangent
Noun
-
These asides prevent The Last of Us from delving into Ellie’s larger emotional journey of having to rediscover her humanity while she’s overwhelmed by her grief.—
Shirley Li,
The Atlantic,
21 Apr. 2025
-
There was some talk among Trump allies that Musk’s media appearances may be curbed after an aside about the need to address waste in Social Security became fodder for Democrats who viewed it as an attack on the program.—
Brett Samuels,
The Hill,
26 Mar. 2025
Adjective
-
And some seemingly tangential issues aren’t so tangential after all.—
Kevin Williams,
Quartz,
22 Apr. 2025
-
Indeed, Buchwald won; the suit was famous in Hollywood circles regarding a tangential issue, namely laying bare the industry accounting practices that kept even wildly successful films from ever making a profit on paper.—
Bill Wyman,
Vulture,
28 Feb. 2025
Noun
-
Alvarado and José Ostos did the cinematography, and their keen sense of light, color, and tempo invests Adela’s tender observations and enigmatic digressions with drama and passion.—
Richard Brody,
New Yorker,
28 Mar. 2025
-
Spread across a larger ensemble, with more side alleys and self-amusing authorial digressions, The Barbarians is more diffuse.—
Sara Holdren,
Vulture,
23 Feb. 2025
Adjective
-
Despite trillions of dollars at stake, forest destruction—and the corporate role in driving it—is still widely treated as a peripheral issue.—
Felicia Jackson,
Forbes.com,
8 May 2025
-
But after a playoff contender over in the American League suffered a brutal injury setback, the Mets could be looking to offload some of their peripheral talent.—
Peter Chawaga,
MSNBC Newsweek,
4 May 2025
Adjective
-
Potentially 40% of autopsies can reveal additional information beyond testing conducted in life, though not all of these will be incidental.—
Lauren B. Solberg,
Sun Sentinel,
6 May 2025
-
Within the emerging framework, a government at war could claim that starving enemy combatants remained legal and that as a result, incidental civilian deaths were tragic but nearly unavoidable outcomes of a legitimate method of modern warfare against totalitarian enemies.—
Boyd van Dijk,
Foreign Affairs,
30 Apr. 2025
Adjective
-
This is pretty much your standard-issue focus-group scene, with dopey viewers idiotically nitpicking irrelevant details.—
Jessica M. Goldstein,
Vulture,
2 May 2025
-
And Colorado was about as irrelevant as any power-conference program in the country by the end of the 2022 season.—
Stewart Mandel,
New York Times,
30 Apr. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Tangent.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tangent. Accessed 21 May. 2025.
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