interdisciplinary
Americanadjective
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combining or involving two or more academic disciplines or fields of study.
The economics and history departments are offering an interdisciplinary seminar on Asia.
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combining or involving two or more professions, technologies, departments, or the like, as in business or industry.
adjective
Etymology
Origin of interdisciplinary
First recorded in 1935–40; inter- ( def. ) + disciplinary ( def. )
Compare meaning
How does interdisciplinary compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Something that's interdisciplinary covers more than one field of study. If you take an interdisciplinary science and literature class, you might read a science fiction novel and then explore the scientific ideas behind it. The word interdisciplinary can be broken into its parts: inter-, which means "between" in Latin, and disciplinary, which is from the Latin disciplina and means teaching or knowledge. Interdisciplinary means between fields, but they don't have to be unrelated disciplines. You can do interdisciplinary work between two sciences, for example. An interdisciplinary conference on biology and computer science might include workshops on both fields.
Vocabulary lists containing interdisciplinary
Words with 15 or More Letters, List 5
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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.
Particularly if you work across creative, intellectual or interdisciplinary worlds where people struggle to categorize what you actually “do.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
The project is an example of the interdisciplinary, cross-institutional work that happens all the time at the Getty, said Catherine Patterson, a scientist for the Getty Conservation Institute.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
The findings come from an interdisciplinary group of neuroscientists and clinicians at the University Hospitals of Cologne and Düsseldorf, Harvard Medical School and Charité Berlin.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 12, 2026
It also situates Noguchi within the wide constellation of collaborators who shaped his interdisciplinary practice—Marcel Breuer, Alexey Brodovitch, Louis Kahn, Isamu Kenmochi, George Nelson and the companies Alcoa, Knoll and Zenith.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
Lawrence, perfecting his style of Big Science, already was involved less in performing experiments than in managing his interdisciplinary staff.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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.
