Disruption

How to spell disruption

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disruption

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disruption mean?

1. nounA serious interruption to the normal course or continuity of an activity, system, or process.

Disruption in a sentence

• The signal failure caused major disruption across the rail network.

• Managers warned that the strike would bring weeks of disruption to production.

Where does disruption come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb rumpere, meaning 'to break' or 'to burst', and its past participle ruptus. From these came the Latin disrumpere, formed with the prefix dis- 'apart', so the literal sense was 'to break apart' or 'to shatter'. The related noun disruptio, meaning 'a breaking to pieces', passed into English in the early 1600s, at first describing a violent physical bursting or rending. Over time the meaning softened from literal shattering toward the modern idea of throwing an orderly process into confusion. The same rumpere root still breaks through in everyday relatives such as 'rupture', 'erupt', and 'interrupt', and recognising that rupt core helps fix the single p and the -tion ending in the spelling.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• rupt (from Latin rumpere: to break)
• -ion (noun of action)