Showing results for "disappeared"

• past participle of disappear.
• past tense form of disappear.

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

See Examples For:

disappeared

People often appeared, walked beside me for a while and then disappeared back into the road; I walked for 40 minutes with an 82-year-old on his 17th Camino, who then left me in his dust.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026

Checking the university’s website, I saw that my list of 50 current students disappeared overnight.

From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2026

Copies of clips are being quickly removed due to copyright claims, and multiple accounts claiming to belong to the group behind the hacks have also disappeared.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

The shutdown brought that trajectory to a sudden end; average attendance fell by 20% in 1995, meaning 20 million fans had disappeared.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026

As soon as they entered Sandy June’s driveway, the sounds of horns and screeching brakes had disappeared.

From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Related Words

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