disorder
Americannoun
-
disorders
plural
-
lack of order or regular arrangement; confusion.
Your room is in utter disorder.
- Synonyms:
- clutter, litter, jumble, disarray, disorderliness
-
an irregularity.
a disorder in legal proceedings.
-
breach of order; disorderly conduct; public disturbance.
- Synonyms:
- turbulence, riot
-
a disturbance in physical or mental health or functions; malady or dysfunction.
a mild stomach disorder.
verb (used with object)
-
disorders,
present (3rd person singular)
-
disordered,
past participle, past
-
disordering
present participle
-
to destroy the order or regular arrangement of; disarrange.
- Synonyms:
- disorganize, disarray
-
to derange the physical or mental health or functions of.
noun
-
a lack of order; disarray; confusion
-
a disturbance of public order or peace
-
an upset of health; ailment
-
a deviation from the normal system or order
verb
-
to upset the order of; disarrange; muddle
-
to disturb the health or mind of
Synonym Usage
Disorder, brawl, disturbance, uproar are disruptions or interruptions of a peaceful situation. Disorder refers to civil unrest or to any scene in which there is confusion or fighting: The police went to the scene of the disorder. A brawl is a noisy, unseemly quarrel, usually in a public place: a tavern brawl. A disturbance is disorder of a size as to inconvenience people: to cause a disturbance. An uproar is a tumult, a bustle and clamor of many voices, often because of a disturbance: a mighty uproar.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
disordersimple
-
disorderssimple
-
have disorderedperfect
-
has disorderedperfect
-
am disorderingprogressive
-
are disorderingprogressive
-
is disorderingprogressive
-
have been disorderingperfect progressive
-
has been disorderingperfect progressive
Past
-
disorderedsimple
-
had disorderedperfect
-
was disorderingprogressive
-
were disorderingprogressive
-
had been disorderingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of disorder
Explanation
Disorder is a lack of order — in other words, chaos, clutter, and general disarray. If everyone in your class is yelling and throwing things, there's no order: there's disorder. If all the library books are out of order and thrown sloppily on the shelf, that's disorder, too. If you mess or mix something up, you're disordering it. Many medical conditions and diseases are also called disorders, like post-traumatic stress disorder. Whenever there's disorder, something is wrong or out of whack.
Vocabulary lists containing disorder
Mayhem! Chaos! Pandemonium!
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for October 15–October 21, 2022
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Health and Healthcare, List 2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Ken Skates said he sought help after his symptoms were at their most severe while studying at the University of Cambridge and he was eventually diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and depression.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Robert Carradine, best known for the 1980s “Nerds” movies, struggled with bipolar disorder for years, his family said in a statement.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 15, 2026
Few people then, not even Carpenter’s closest confidantes, knew how to talk about what was actually an eating disorder, much less manage it.
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2026
This loss can occur after brain injuries and in autoimmune diseases such as the rare neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, in which the body's own antibodies attack and destroy astrocytes.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 12, 2026
Habit ruleth like a task-master returned from the grave; I could not leave the unneeded volumes in disorder.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Indole metabolites have been connected to a wide range of diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and cancer.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 15, 2026
The French government had promoted the ban as a way to better protect young people from the harmful effects associated with social media platforms, including anxiety, depression, sleep disorders and online harassment.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Early is interested in the sickly vanity of eating disorders and conceptual femininity, and he explores the danger of these illnesses through a lens that is both uneasy and unique to his film.
From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026
I will be screened for a range of different conditions, including skin cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, eye conditions like glaucoma, as well as kidney and blood disorders.
From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2026
Is it any wonder Americans suffer from so many eating disorders?
From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan
With a major career milestone within her reach and increased appearances in front of the camera, the sudden pressures on Maddie trigger long-hidden patterns of disordered eating: bingeing and purging, secrets and lies.
From Salon ● Aug. 8, 2026
Light can be disordered in one characteristic, such as the directions in which it travels, while still creating photons that are entangled through another characteristic, such as polarization.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 8, 2026
Like all grieving, it is complicated and disordered, and beautifully so.
From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2026
Jessica Scheer, CEO of National Eating Disorders Association, said the organization has heard that some providers don’t screen for a history of disordered eating before prescribing GLP-1s.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
Shuffle the cards and you put them in a disordered state.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
The researchers then expose the cilia to a damped, alternating magnetic field which has the effect of disordering the magnetization of the microparticles.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 24, 2024
The economic and social troubles of 1993 rippled through my community, as these things do, disordering the trajectories of lives and industries to the ruin of some.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2021
But there will be many pairs of events that are causally related, that will end up far from each other—thus disordering space and locality.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 4, 2019
Furthermore, disordering the ligand distribution drastically increases adhesion growth, but reduces the rigidity threshold for adhesion collapse.
From Nature ● Dec. 5, 2017
But the vapour of a limekiln would come between me and them, disordering them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I saw two men looking at me.
From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
