disruption

1 an act of delaying or interrupting the continuity; "it was presented without commercial breaks" [syn: break, interruption, gap]

2 a disorderly outburst or tumult; "they were amazed by the furious disturbance they had caused" [syn: disturbance, commotion, stir, flutter, hurly burly, to-do, hoo-ha, hoo-hah, kerfuffle]

3 an event that results in a displacement or discontinuity [syn: dislocation]

4 the act of causing disorder [syn: perturbation]

English

Etymology

From disruptionem (from disrumpere)

Noun

1. The act of breaking regular flow or sequence of something.
   • The network created a disruption in the show when they broke in with a newscast.

Translations

• Dutch: onderbreking , ontregeling
• Finnish: sekasorto, hajaannus
• French: interruption , perturbation
• Spanish: quebranto , incidente

Disruption generally refers to the normal workings of something being interrupted.

• In Scotland, the Disruption of 1843 refers to the divergence from the Church of Scotland of the Free Church of Scotland
• Disruption as a method of execution pulling at all four limbs simultaneously with animals or machines so that the body of the execution victim is pulled apart.
• Information security specialists also may refer to a disaster as a disruption when an event interrupts normal business or technical processes.
• Disruption is also the term for the cancellation of an adoption of a child before it is legally completed. In common usage, though, it refers also to the legal procedure for ending an adoption already completed, which is technically known as dissolution.
• Disruption is a method of disabling an explosive device by shooting it with water at high velocity.
• See also Disruption (of schema) in evolutionary computing
• Disruption Law, proposed by Downes and Mui in their "Unleashing the killer app" book.
• Disruption is the work philosophy of TBWA\
• Disruptive innovation is Clayton Christensen's theory of industry disruption by new technology or products.

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