Disperse

How to spell disperse

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce disperse

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disperse mean?

1. verbTo scatter or spread people or things over a wide area, or to break up and move away in different directions.

Disperse in a sentence

• Police arrived to disperse the crowd that had gathered outside the stadium.

• The wind helped disperse the seeds across the open field.

Where does disperse come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb dispergere, which meant 'to scatter abroad' or 'to spread in all directions'. It was built from the prefix dis-, meaning 'apart' or 'in different directions', joined to spargere, meaning 'to scatter, strew, or sprinkle'. The past participle form dispersus passed into Old French and then into English in the late 1300s, keeping its core idea of breaking something up and sending the pieces away from one another. The same spargere root also gives us 'sparse' and 'aspersion', and recognising that sper element helps fix the spelling. A common adult trap is confusing disperse with the similar-sounding 'disburse' (to pay out money), so it helps to remember that disperse carries the scattering sense of its Latin sperse, while disburse hides the word 'purse'.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• sperse (from Latin spargere: to scatter)
• -e