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:
She urged women who’ve dealt with issues like anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder to make preconception and pregnancy appointments with care providers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
Brown, 35, had denied murder with a special defence that he was suffering from a mental disorder at the time and believed he had been possessed by the spirit of 19th Century occultist Aleister Crowley.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026
Of 1,306 patients, 35.9% met “fire-related exposure criteria,” meaning they showed symptoms such as an acute upper respiratory infection, eye disorder, conjunctivitis, cough, asthma exacerbation or other respiratory problem.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
We are here because one spring day in May, Joshua Fox, a 31-year-old Black disabled veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder and a checkered past, stood up and stress-tested Eatherly’s business model.
From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2026
“Everything here is still in great disorder and was thrown into complete confusion during the move,” she wrote to Clara Imhoff, a Nuremberg student who remained a friend.
From "The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian's Art Changed Science" by Joyce Sidman
In an April 2025 court filing, a psychiatrist hired by the defense found that Jeffries was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive disorders requiring round-the-clock care.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
The scientists hope this will help shed light on how a range of disorders such as autism and schizophrenia first emerge and then progress later in life.
From Barron's ● Aug. 19, 2026
During one of his initial court appearances in 2018, Atkins told a judge that he had been diagnosed with “bipolar disorder and a list of other disorders as well.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
The team is particularly interested in studying whether similar retreats could help people living with chronic pain, mood disorders, or conditions involving the immune system.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 9, 2026
And had his successors been united they would have enjoyed it at their leisure, for in that kingdom no disorders arose other than those they stirred up themselves.
From "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli
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
As a psychiatrist, he was mindful of the whole person who was suffering—not merely a disordered brain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
Like all grieving, it is complicated and disordered, and beautifully so.
From Salon ● Jul. 24, 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
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.
