Disappoint

How to spell disappoint

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disappoint

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disappoint mean?

1. verbTo fail to fulfil the hopes or expectations of someone.

Disappoint in a sentence

• The new manager did not want to disappoint the team on her first day.

• Cheap materials can disappoint even the most patient builder.

Where does disappoint come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English in the 1400s from the Old French desapointier, which literally meant to undo an appointment or to remove someone from an office or post. That French verb was built from des-, a prefix signalling reversal or removal, attached to apointier, meaning to arrange or to appoint, which in turn traces back to the noun point. So the earliest English sense was concretely administrative: to disappoint a person was to strip them of an expected position. Over the 1500s the meaning softened and broadened into the modern emotional sense of failing to meet someone's hopes or expectations. The spelling trap is baked right into its construction: the prefix is the single-s dis-, and the root appoint already carries its own doubled p, which is exactly why people wrongly double the s or drop one of the p's.

How the word is built

• dis- (reversal, undoing)
• appoint (to assign or arrange, from a- 'to'
• point)