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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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:
Joel canceled concerts in May 2025 after revealing two months before that he had a brain disorder known as normal pressure hydrocephalus, or NPH, which causes physical and mental issues.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026
It was a time when Flynn, who was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was insecure, frustrated with his life and struggling with his mental health.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
And for people with certain medical histories, like having an eating disorder, being pregnant or taking a SGLT2 inhibitor, fasting isn’t a good idea.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 16, 2026
The results also indicated that treatment could stabilize motor function, an important outcome for a progressive disorder that can steadily undermine a person's ability to move independently.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 13, 2026
Fourteen years after the incident with the Weavers, I would sit in a university classroom and listen to a professor of psychology describe something called bipolar disorder.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
The therapy, which brought in $17.6 billion last year, is widely prescribed for patients with autoimmune disorders like inflammatory bowel disease and Crohn’s disease.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 15, 2026
They will also be held directly responsible for protecting under-18s from pornography, online bullying, content that glorifies crime, and content that encourages eating disorders.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
Lactose intolerance is also often confused with disorders of the gut-brain interaction, says Shaukat.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 12, 2026
Glaucoma, macular degeneration, and other retinal disorders are associated with changes in fluid regulation, cellular waste buildup, tissue stress, and inflammation.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026
He's not even a particularly interesting person, unless he's judged by his organizational disorders.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Bossy’s direction raises the clamorous volume instead of sorting out the disordered structure or digging into the unexamined silences.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026
Rather than understanding dissociation as a symptom of disordered eating, researchers increasingly consider how it may both emerge from and help maintain these patterns.
From Slate ● Sep. 23, 2026
Dr Neil Stanley, sleep expert and author of the book How to Sleep Well, argues that gamifying sleep is creating more disordered sleeping.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 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
I rose, disordered with delight, trepidation, confusion—I know not what—and said—louder than I liked, “Bono? Pro Bono?”
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
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
Could this disordering of locality serve to explain the quantum nonlocality inherent in entangled particles?
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
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
