Interference

How to spell interference

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce interference

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does interference mean?

1. nounThe act of getting involved in or obstructing something in a way that hinders or disrupts it.
2. nounThe combination of two or more waves that reinforce or cancel each other, or the unwanted disruption of a signal.

Interference in a sentence

• The project failed because of constant interference from senior managers.

• The engineer shielded the cable to reduce electrical interference on the line.

• She resented any interference in how she raised her children.

• The radio crackled with interference whenever the storm moved overhead.

Where does interference come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the verb 'interfere', which English took from the Old French and Anglo-Norman expression s'entreferir, meaning 'to strike one another'. That phrase combined entre, meaning 'between', with ferir, 'to strike', and ferir itself descends from the Latin ferire, 'to strike or hit'. The original idea was therefore one of blows colliding, of two things knocking into each other, and from that physical clash grew the modern sense of one thing getting in the way of another. The abstract noun 'interference' was formed in English in the late 1700s, and in the nineteenth century physicists adopted it for the way overlapping waves strike and combine. A useful spelling memory is that the middle holds 'fer' from ferire, sandwiched between 'inter' and 'ence', so the trap is really the unstressed vowels rather than the consonants.

How the word is built

• inter- (between)
• fer (from Latin ferire, to strike)
• -ence (noun suffix)