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:
Avelar’s youngest daughter has an eating disorder and is trying to gain weight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
I had an eating disorder, which is still kind of … You know, last night, I asked for apple juice during the show — I was in trouble because I wasn’t eating.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026
Imagine a relatively uneventful in which the Fed raises rates, explains its reasoning convincingly; Treasury yields settle; inflation expectations remain contained; the dollar behaves normally; and equities absorb the decision without disorder.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026
A 16-year-old boy was arrested on Saturday in connection with the disorder.
From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2026
Years before, I had told her what I’d learned in my psychology class about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but she had shrugged it off.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
While others with hearing disorders can perceive certain low-frequency vibrations as sound, for Pride almost everything is completely inaudible without powerful hearing aids.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2026
"We take into account their sleep patterns, their diet, their weight, the amount they exercise, what medication they might be taking and we assess for signs of sleep disorders," he says.
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2026
The pelacarsen study results also come less than a week after Novartis said it had paused eight trials of an experimental cell therapy for autoimmune and neurological disorders after three patients died.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 7, 2026
She said she’s had patients find out about previously unknown thyroid disorders and kidney dysfunction during pre-ops.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
And thus, from the ambitions of the priests are born the disorders and the quarrels among the barons.
From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli
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
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
This observation informs her compelling geopolitical picaresque through a collection of disputed and disordered territories across Europe and Asia.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
The universe would have started in a smooth and ordered state, and would become lumpy and disordered as time went on.
From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking
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.
