perturbed

[per-turbd]

adjective

1. feeling or showing great concern or mental or emotional upset.

   The heaviness of his step and the perturbed expression on his face told us that the captain was not in the best of moods.

2. greatly disordered or deranged.

   He keeps using the same nonsensical phrases and the same perturbed logic, with no sense of the context of the discussion.

verb

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

Other Word Forms

• perturbedly adverb
• perturbedness noun
• unperturbed adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of perturbed¹

perturb + -ed ²

Example Sentences

His adversaries think he’ll crumple like yesterday’s broadsheet when they turn him away, and are perturbed to realize he’s more like the human equivalent of tissue hanging onto the heel of a shoe.

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Dubois, who has 22 wins in 24 fights as a professional, looked perturbed that his rival had stolen the limelight and walked off shaking his head.

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“I’m bummed. I’m disappointed. I don’t think Casey Stengel could change the outcome of that ballclub,’’ a perturbed Roberts told reporters Sunday.

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Facing the blank page perturbed Boneta at the beginning of his first foray into long-form writing, so he asked his writer friends for advice.

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They might be especially perturbed when reminded that the high quality of American health care depends largely on the influx of medical doctors and researchers from around the world.

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Related Words

• annoyed 
• irritated