Disillusioned

How to spell disillusioned

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce disillusioned

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disillusioned mean?

1. adjectiveDisappointed after discovering that something is not as good or true as you had believed.

Disillusioned in a sentence

• Many staff felt disillusioned after the promised bonuses were quietly cancelled.

• She grew disillusioned with politics once the same promises kept going unmet.

Where does disillusioned come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built on 'illusion', which English borrowed through Old French from the Latin illusio, meaning 'a mocking' or 'a deceiving'. That noun traces back to the verb illudere, literally 'to play upon' or 'to mock', formed from in- 'on, against' and ludere 'to play' (the same root that gives us 'ludicrous' and 'prelude'). By the time English added the negative prefix dis-, meaning 'to undo or strip away', the sense had settled into 'freed from a false belief', usually with a flavour of disappointment at discovering the truth. 'Disillusioned' emerged in the nineteenth century as the past participle of the verb 'disillusion', describing the deflated state of someone whose pleasant illusions have been removed. The spelling trap lives in the doubled letters: a single s after the prefix and a double l in the middle, because the original Latin illudere already carried that double l from the assimilated in- prefix.

How the word is built

• dis- (reversal, removal)
• illusion (a false belief or impression)
• -ed (adjective/past-participle suffix)