disappeared

American  

[dis-uh-peerd] / ˌdɪs əˈpɪərd /

adjective

1. having vanished from sight or existence.

   Right this minute, the only thing I want to do is to find a way to recover my disappeared phone photos.

   The museum displays tools and artifacts from an almost disappeared culture, known only from one archaeological site.

2. (of a person) having vanished under suspicious or unknown circumstances.

   Family members of the disappeared persons were denied the right to any effective remedy, including the right to know the fate of their loved ones.

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noun

(used with a plural verb)

1. none the disappeared people, especially political opponents, who have vanished under suspicious or unknown circumstances, or without due process of law.

   The determination of the parents, grandparents, and—most recently—children of the disappeared is finally putting dictators, torturers, and their accomplices behind bars.

verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of disappear.

Etymology

Origin of disappeared

First recorded in 1400–50 as a verb: disappear ( def. ) + -ed ¹ ( def. ), and in 1640–50 as an adjective: disappear ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. )

Example Sentences

There's also a mystery at the heart of the game - where have all the trainers, the series' heroes who capture and battle its monsters, disappeared to?

From BBC

He disappeared through the double doors without looking back.

From Literature

It was then that I noticed that our audience had disappeared.

From Literature

Rembrandt's Vision of Zacharias in the Temple, from 1633, was excluded from a list of the Dutch master's works in 1960, and disappeared after being sold to a private collector the following year.

From BBC

Although Liam has since been released, “We’ve had other students in our building also taken in. We realized a fifth grader was also at the detention center; they had just kind of disappeared.”

From Salon

Related Words

• absent
• adrift
• disoriented
• hidden
• invisible
• misplaced
• vanished