Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To disturb greatly; make uneasy or anxious.
- v. To throw into great confusion.
- v. Physics & Astronomy To cause perturbation, as of a celestial orbit.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To disturb greatly; agitate; disquiet.
- To disorder; confuse; cause irregularity in.
Wiktionary
- v. To disturb; to bother or unsettle.
- v. To slightly modify the motion of an object.
- v. To modify the motion of a body by exerting a gravitational force.
- v. To modify slightly, such as an equation or value.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To disturb; to agitate; to vex; to trouble; to disquiet.
- v. To disorder; to confuse.
WordNet 3.0
- v. disturb in mind or make uneasy or cause to be worried or alarmed
- v. throw into great confusion or disorder
- v. disturb or interfere with the usual path of an electron or atom
- v. cause a celestial body to deviate from a theoretically regular orbital motion, especially as a result of interposed or extraordinary gravitational pull
Etymologies
- Middle English perturben, from Old French perturber, from Latin perturbāre : per-, per- + turbāre, to throw into disorder (from turba, confusion, perhaps from Greek turbē).
Examples
“On the contrary, check which phone calls perturb your mental health and give you a headache.”
“It was an off the cuff remark, it was not meant to "perturb" you.”
“It used to kind of perturb me the way she'd say that.”
“It used to kind of perturb me the way she's say that.”
“In short, true believers are much less likely to have an Aunt Susan or pal Al to perturb their unquestioning faith.”
“The fact that they are unable to spend even their current budget properly doesn't perturb the bureaucrats.”
“In some sense, i suppose you could talk about the “stability” of the set of axioms defining your theory, i.e., how they behave if you “perturb” them — in some sense, a measure of how “robust” your chosen set of axioms is.”
“Nothing much, a bit of carelessness, yet enough to bring the professional wrath of Doctor Bicknell about his ears and to perturb the working of the staff and nurses for twenty-four hours to come.”
“His slightest frown might perturb them, his anger terrify them, his command compel them to certain death; yet, on the other hand, not one of them would have dreamed of addressing him otherwise than intimately by his first name, which name, "Hardman," was transmuted by their tongues into Kanaka”
“Fletcher's performance highlighted a problem that must perturb Redknapp despite his insouciance – Emmanuel Adebayor seems to be going off the boil.”
The Guardian: Adebayor goes off boil to leave Spurs short of steam against Wolves
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘perturb’.
-
GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
-
spelling list 17
appoint, assent, concur, consult, dissuade, flabbergast, haggle, perturb, procure, receptive, repudiate, resolve and 3 more...
-
gre
municipal, whit, dissembler, berate, liberally, embellish, dissimilitude, histrionics, flamboyance, bombastic, bovine, calumny and 142 more...
-
Vocab 17
my wordnic words
appoint, assent, concur, consult, dissuade, flabbergast, haggle, perturb, procure, receptive, repudiate, resolve and 3 more...
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.