Interruption

How to spell interruption

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce interruption

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does interruption mean?

1. nounAn act of stopping or breaking the continuous progress of something, often by intervening or speaking out of turn.

Interruption in a sentence

• The constant interruption from her phone made it hard to finish the report.

• After a brief interruption for the weather update, the broadcast resumed.

Where does interruption come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb interrumpere, which meant 'to break apart' or 'to break in between', formed from inter, meaning 'between', and rumpere, meaning 'to break' or 'to burst'. From the verb came the Latin noun interruptio, describing a breaking off or a gap. English took the word in during the late 1300s and early 1400s, largely through Old French, keeping the sense of something that breaks the flow of an action or a sequence. The root rumpere is the same one that gives us 'rupture', 'erupt', and 'corrupt', so picturing something breaking can help fix the spelling. The trickiest part for writers is the doubled letters and the unstressed middle: it is inter plus rupt plus ion, with the single r of inter meeting the r of rupt, and the ending is -tion rather than -sion.

How the word is built

• inter- (between)
• rupt (from Latin rumpere: to break)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)