Dysfunction

How to spell dysfunction

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dysfunction

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dysfunction mean?

1. nounAbnormal, impaired, or faulty operation of a bodily system, mechanism, organisation, or relationship.

Dysfunction in a sentence

• The specialist diagnosed a thyroid dysfunction after the blood tests.

• Years of poor management led to widespread dysfunction across the department.

Where does dysfunction come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word fuses a Greek prefix with a Latin root. The prefix dys- comes from Greek and means 'bad', 'abnormal', or 'impaired', the same element found in 'dyslexia' and 'dyspepsia'. The second part traces back to the Latin verb fungi, meaning 'to perform' or 'to carry out a duty', whose past participle functus gave rise to functio, 'a performance or execution'. English already had 'function' as a noun for the proper working or role of something, and in the nineteenth century the medical and scientific community attached dys- to coin 'dysfunction' for any impaired or abnormal working. The spelling trap lives entirely in that opening syllable: writers reach for the far more common Latin prefix dis- (as in 'disconnect'), but here the correct element is the Greek dys-, so the word begins d-y-s, not d-i-s.

How the word is built

• dys- (bad, abnormal, impaired)
• funct (from Latin fungi: to perform, to carry out)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)