Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To disturb or confuse; make uneasy or anxious.
  • transitive verb To cause (a system) to become altered or imbalanced from a normal state.
  • transitive verb Physics & Astronomy To cause perturbation in (the orbit of a celestial body, for example) by gravitational interaction.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To disturb greatly; agitate; disquiet.
  • To disorder; confuse; cause irregularity in.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To disturb; to agitate; to vex; to trouble; to disquiet.
  • transitive verb rare To disorder; to confuse.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To disturb; to bother or unsettle.
  • verb physics To slightly modify the motion of an object.
  • verb astronomy To modify the motion of a body by exerting a gravitational force.
  • verb mathematics To modify slightly, such as an equation or value.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb disturb in mind or make uneasy or cause to be worried or alarmed
  • verb throw into great confusion or disorder
  • verb disturb or interfere with the usual path of an electron or atom
  • verb cause a celestial body to deviate from a theoretically regular orbital motion, especially as a result of interposed or extraordinary gravitational pull

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English perturben, from Old French perturber, from Latin perturbāre : per-, per- + turbāre, to throw into disorder (from turba, confusion, perhaps from Greek turbē).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English perturben, from Old French perturber, from Latin perturbare ("throw into confusion, confuse, disorder, disturb"), from per ("through") + turbare ("to confuse, disturb").

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Examples

  • On the contrary, check which phone calls perturb your mental health and give you a headache.

    Doctors say prolonged mobile conversations are ok 2008

  • It was an off the cuff remark, it was not meant to "perturb" you.

    The Bitch Is Back 2008

  • It used to kind of perturb me the way she's say that.

    CNN Transcript Jun 10, 2008 2008

  • It used to kind of perturb me the way she'd say that.

    CNN Transcript Jun 10, 2008 2008

  • In short, true believers are much less likely to have an Aunt Susan or pal Al to perturb their unquestioning faith.

    American Grace Robert D. Putnam 2010

  • 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.

    SEMPER IDEM 2010

  • 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

    THE BONES OF KAHEKILI 2010

  • Fletcher's performance highlighted a problem that must perturb Redknapp despite his insouciance – Emmanuel Adebayor seems to be going off the boil.

    Adebayor goes off boil to leave Spurs short of steam against Wolves 2012

  • The fact that they are unable to spend even their current budget properly doesn't perturb the bureaucrats.

    Spend Better, Not More Derk Jan Eppink 2011

  • 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.

    The Language of Science – it’s “just a theory” 2010

Comments

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  • Specifically, related to anxiety.

    July 24, 2015