Disorderly

How to spell disorderly

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce disorderly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disorderly mean?

1. adjectiveLacking neat arrangement; messy or chaotic in appearance or organisation.
2. adjectiveBehaving in a noisy, unruly, or publicly disruptive way, often in a legal sense.

Disorderly in a sentence

• The spare room was a disorderly heap of boxes and old paperwork.

• He was charged with disorderly conduct after the match.

• Investigators found the accounts in a disorderly state, with receipts missing.

• The bar manager asked the disorderly group to leave before police arrived.

Where does disorderly come from?

Language of origin: French

This word builds on 'disorder', which English took from the Old French 'desordre', a noun formed from the prefix 'des-' meaning 'reversal' or 'removal of' and 'ordre' meaning 'order' or 'arrangement'. That second part traces back to the Latin 'ordo', 'ordinem', which literally meant a row, rank, or orderly series, the same root that gives us 'ordinary' and 'ordinal'. Once 'disorder' had settled into English in the late 1400s to describe a breakdown of arrangement, the familiar adjective ending '-ly' was attached to produce 'disorderly', describing anything that lacks proper order. From the sense of untidiness it stretched naturally into the sense of unruly or lawless behaviour, which is why the legal phrase 'disorderly conduct' became so common. The spelling stays regular if you remember it is simply 'dis' plus 'order' plus 'ly', with the silent point being that the 'er' of 'order' is kept intact before the suffix.

How the word is built

• dis- (lack of, removal of)
• order (arrangement, sequence)
• -ly (adjective suffix)