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
Vulture Staff, Vulture, 23 Sep. 2025
An early tangent leads us on a 12-minute detour talking about Bob Dylan.
—Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 16 Sep. 2025
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
See All Example Sentences for tangent
Noun
Like his film Bacurau, The Secret Agent bends back on its own genre, indulging in tangents and side characters and tonal shifts throughout.
—Vulture Staff, Vulture, 23 Sep. 2025
An early tangent leads us on a 12-minute detour talking about Bob Dylan.
—Ethan Shanfeld, Variety, 16 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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
See All Example Sentences for tangent
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tangent
Noun
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All the history and legends became real hearing his asides and details.—
Alex Ross,
PEOPLE,
29 Oct. 2025
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While After the Hunt is full of scathing dialogue, snarky asides, and buzzwords aplenty, the final conversation between Alma and Maggie may be its most damning indictment of systems of power.—
Barry Levitt,
Time,
17 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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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
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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
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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
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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
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For players, the potential advantages include a much larger accessible library, the combination of local hardware, cloud, and PC options in a single device, and stronger peripheral and mod support typical of Windows.—
Alex Harrington,
MSNBC Newsweek,
28 Oct. 2025
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Patients can still use their natural peripheral vision while the implant restores some central vision.—
Kurt Knutsson,
FOXNews.com,
28 Oct. 2025
Adjective
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But any actual emotional resonance or narrative coherence that All’s Fair manages along the way is purely incidental.—
Angie Han,
HollywoodReporter,
4 Nov. 2025
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Which differences are incidental and which are fundamental?—
James Somers,
New Yorker,
3 Nov. 2025
Adjective
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But several costly mistakes on offense rendered all of Miami’s one-sided statistics irrelevant as Brooks pointed out.—
Andre Fernandez,
Miami Herald,
31 Oct. 2025
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And when data doesn’t reflect how people make real decisions, the technology quickly becomes irrelevant.—
Adam Mills,
MSNBC Newsweek,
29 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Tangent.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tangent. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.
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