disrupted

Disrupted is the past participle of the verb disrupt, and it can function as both an adjective and the past tense form. The word traces to Latin disruptus, from rumpere “to break,” with the English prefix dis- meaning “apart, away.” This lineage reflects the core sense of forcefully breaking or interrupting a sequence or system.

As an adjective, disrupted describes something that has been interrupted, disturbed, or unsettled. It is commonly applied to services, schedules, communications, and plans, for example, a disrupted power supply or a disrupted flight. In a broader sense, disruption refers to a process or event that significantly alters a system, market, or social order.

In everyday and formal usage, disrupted often conveys an event that interrupts normal operation or continuity. In business and technology discourse, the related verb disrupt is used to denote introducing a change that alters established practices or markets, as in a company disrupting an industry or a platform disrupting traditional workflows. In this sense, disrupted can indicate both the experience of interruption and the outcome of consequential change.

Linguistically, disrupted pairs with related terms such as disruption (the noun) and disruptive (the adjective describing something that tends to cause or characterize disruption). In science and engineering, the term can describe altered states or interruptions of processes, such as disrupted signaling in biology or disrupted connections in a network. Overall, disrupted conveys interruption, disturbance, or notable change to a system or sequence.