the.com/derailment
When the plan stays on the track but reality doesn't.
means The moment something that was running smoothly gets knocked off course and crashes to a halt.
from Straight from the railway: 'derail' joins the French-derived prefix 'de-' (off, away) with 'rail,' the track itself — literally to come off the rails. The word rode in with the trains in the 1800s, describing actual wrecks, and only later jumped the tracks itself to describe plans, meetings, and conversations going sideways.
- origin
- literally trains leaving the rails, 1850s word
- root
- from French dérailler, off the rail
- usage
- now mostly describes meetings, not trains
- therapy term
- a thought disorder, jumping topics mid-sentence