Skip to main content
en route

en route

144 3.7
While traveling to a place
  • idiom
  • /ɑn ruːt/
translation icon : de camino
  • 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.

  • 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

on the way
vsen route
663 1.0

Something or someone that is going to a place and will arrive soon

has identical meaning but is expressed in different wording

Antonyms

46 2.9

Not moving and staying in one place

7 2.4

Someone or something that is quiet and still and not moving

How Close

approach path
  • Specialized
1 5.5
landing approach
  • Specialized
1 4.4
approach
90 2.5
descent
89 3.7
en route
144 3.7

Surface Forms

en route positive
enroute positive

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'.