estranged; estranging
1
: to arouse especially mutual enmity or indifference in (someone) where there had formerly been love, affection, or friendliness : alienate
John's excesses gradually estranged him from his mother …—
Philip Norman
Philip NormanShe became estranged from her family.
2
: to remove from customary environment or associations
The first words spoken were not those of one becoming estranged from this world, and already permitted to stray at times into realms foreign to the living.—Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë
estranger
noun
es·trange·ment
ə̇ˈstrānjmənt 
eˈ-
plural -s
: the act of estranging or the condition of being estranged : alienation especially in friendship
the small difference of opinion snowballed into mutual resentment and resulted in final and total estrangement
the hero, a middle-aged intellectual and student, has passed through successive estrangements from bourgeois life—Time
Timeresulted in the almost complete estrangement of arts and letters from the sciences—Scientific American Reader
Scientific American ReaderExamples of estrange in a Sentence
Verb
she estranged several of her coworkers when she let her promotion go to her head
Recent Examples on the Web
Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 11 June 2026
Are Sam and Charlie still estranged?
—Christopher Rudolph, PEOPLE, 11 June 2026
Hans died in 1978, estranged from Edith and Nickolas.
—Brian Boucher, ARTnews.com, 5 June 2026
But their products have a way of estranging their authors from the final output: Printing presses inserted errors that authors themselves didn’t make, and now AI systems create communiqués that sound nothing like the person sending them.
—Michael Waters, The Atlantic, 21 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for estrange
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Verb
Queen of Hearts and The Girl with the Needle actress Trine Dyrholm co-stars a woman estranged from children who turns up uninvited at a weekend-long naming party for her son’s firstborn child at a luxury season resort.
—Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, 11 June 2026
Are Sam and Charlie still estranged?
—Christopher Rudolph, PEOPLE, 11 June 2026
Hans died in 1978, estranged from Edith and Nickolas.
—Brian Boucher, ARTnews.com, 5 June 2026
But their products have a way of estranging their authors from the final output: Printing presses inserted errors that authors themselves didn’t make, and now AI systems create communiqués that sound nothing like the person sending them.
—Michael Waters, The Atlantic, 21 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for estrange
Cite this Entry
“Estrange.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/estrange. Accessed 17 Jun. 2026.
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