disparition

Disparition is a French noun meaning disappearance, the act or process of ceasing to be present or visible. It can refer to people who vanish, objects that go missing, or events that cease to occur. The term encompasses both intentional and involuntary losses and is used across everyday language, media reporting, and scientific or legal contexts.

In everyday use, disparition covers missing persons cases, lost property, and the disappearance of animals or natural phenomena, such as the vanishing of a ship or the extinction of a species. In scientific and technical contexts, the term can describe the disappearance of luminous signals, chemical traces, or patterns within a system, as well as the apparent fading of a trend or effect.

In legal and human-rights contexts, the equivalent term in English is disappearance, and the related phrase disparition forcée denotes enforced disappearance, a violation recognized by international law. International instruments prohibit state agents from abducting or secretly detaining individuals and denying them access to information about their fate or whereabouts.

In literature, La disparition by Georges Perec (1969) is a landmark work of constraint-based writing, a lipogram that omits the letter E throughout the French text. The novel explores absence and language, and its English translation is titled A Void.

See also: Disappearance; Enforced disappearance; Lipogram; The Vanishing.