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. )
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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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Drama High
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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.
Just as important as recognizing interdisciplinary connections for herself was building a network of people who would vouch for her.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 28, 2026
Joel Hellermark, Workday’s chief AI officer, said the company is benefiting from improvements in AI coding models, and speeding up the way it builds products with “polymathic teams of interdisciplinary talent.”
From The Wall Street Journal • May 21, 2026
According to Dr. Conrad Helm, "The comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach provides an excellent basis for thoroughly documenting the diversity of marine annelids and, at the same time, for specifically defining future research priorities."
From Science Daily • Mar. 27, 2026
I am part of an interdisciplinary team of computer science, AI, cybersecurity, psychology, social science, journalism and policy researchers who have sounded the alarm about the threat of malicious AI swarms.
From Salon • Feb. 15, 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.
