Disrupting

How to spell disrupting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disrupting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disrupting mean?

1. verbCausing disorder in or interrupting the normal course of an activity, process, or system.

Disrupting in a sentence

• The roadworks were disrupting the morning commute for thousands of drivers.

• Constant phone alerts kept disrupting her concentration during the meeting.

Where does disrupting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin verb disrumpere, meaning 'to burst apart' or 'to shatter', built from the prefix dis-, conveying 'apart' or 'asunder', and rumpere, meaning 'to break'. The Latin past participle was disruptus, which gave English the verb 'disrupt', recorded from the early seventeenth century, originally describing things being physically broken open or torn apart. Over time the meaning softened from literal rupturing to the modern sense of throwing an activity or system into disorder. The rumpere root is surprisingly productive in English, surfacing in relatives such as 'rupture', 'erupt', 'interrupt', and 'bankrupt', all of which share that idea of breaking. The form 'disrupting' is simply the present participle, and the double-checking trap for writers is remembering the single s and the -pt cluster before the -ing.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• rupt (from Latin rumpere: to break)
• -ing (present participle suffix)