en route
141
3.7
- idiom
- /ɑn ruːt/
- The twenty-five-year-old never reached his chosen field; he died en route of meningitis in Cairo, Egypt.
- en route to the destination
- died en route
- days en route
Examples
-
We're en route to your location with the President of the United States.
-
Medical assistance is en route.
-
Maybe they stopped to celebrate en route.
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You'll get more details en route.
-
So I stepped into the old passenger train en route to Kanazawa with a feeling of relief.
Fiction book (1990) -
A blonde girl slipped anxiously through the streets, en route to a modeling job.
Academic text (2003) -
His bed was the lower berth of a rattling Pullman en route to Chicago.
Academic text (1994) -
On July 9, the patient had traveled through West Bengal, India, en route from Thimphu to Samtse, Bhutan.
Academic text (2013) -
A week later, Captain Vaya and his Orion departed through the Denmark Strait heading towards Cape Horn before entering into the Pacific en route to Australian waters.
-
Haitian migrants often travel through the Bahamas en route to the United States.
Synonyms
887
1.0
Something or someone that is going to a place and will arrive soon
Antonyms
How Close
- Specialized
1
5.5
- Specialized
1
4.4
89
2.5
97
3.7
141
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
en + route
Although 'en route' is a borrower from French, its components are compositionally meaningful: 'en' functions like 'in/on' and 'route' means a path or road, so the phrase literally yields 'on the way'. This correspondence is cross-linguistically familiar and follows straightforward preposition + noun logic, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
En route comes from French words en + route meaning 'on the road'. So it means 'on the way' or 'while traveling to a place'.