1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. disturbing

Find the word definition

What is "disturbing"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
disturbing
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a worrying/disturbing aspect
▪ The worrying aspect is that it gets worse every year.
an alarming/worrying/disturbing trend
▪ I have detected a worrying trend of late.
horrible/disturbing
▪ A horrible thought struck her: could he be having an affair?
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
deeply
▪ It is radical, revolutionary and deeply disturbing.
▪ But the mythical basis for these gratifying notions is, once again, deeply disturbing.
▪ I found this a deeply disturbing work, an impression which was further intensified upon repeat hearings.
more
▪ But somehow this latest encounter with Matthew had been even more disturbing than their encounter in the cupboard.
▪ Talking of Random House - and who isn't - more disturbing news reaches me.
▪ Another, more disturbing, thought jarred Holman's mind.
▪ All this was awful enough, but a yet more disturbing revelation was to come.
▪ Once the father was imprisoned, new and even more disturbing allegations began to emerge from the children.
▪ They passed a counter above which hung trusses of pigeons, pheasants and other less identifiable but more disturbing birds.
▪ But when he arrives down under, the simple enquiry leads to other more disturbing questions.
most
▪ One of the most disturbing features of the case was how patients' protestations of abuse were ignored.
▪ One of the most disturbing aspects of the report relates to the financing of the committee.
▪ But the strikes themselves have left the most disturbing legacy.
▪ Complacency on the part of the home owner is the most disturbing factor in domestic security.
▪ The flickering firelight revealed an appearance that was most disturbing.
▪ This is most disturbing, Lennon.
▪ The most disturbing threat to our freedom and security is the growing disrespect for the rule of law.
rather
▪ The anchoress would be interred in this room in an impressive if rather disturbing ceremony during a Mass for the Dead.
very
▪ It happens frequently and it's very disturbing.
▪ This was very disturbing emotionally for George, but it really had to be done.
▪ I find it very disturbing and unwelcome to have you go touching me as you do.
▪ However, the disappearance of the Soviet Union will have very disturbing consequences.
▪ The possible consequences of this are very disturbing indeed.
▪ Except that there was the very disturbing thought lodged somewhere in her mind that she didn't want it to be harmless.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ It's very disturbing, the way they're getting rid of older employees.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I dismissed the thoughts as too disturbing and concentrated instead on Selkirk's poem.
▪ I have never been regular, so it is not disturbing to find them light, blotchy and short-lived.
▪ It seems to open up all the disturbing conflicts and inconsistencies which have been at the heart of their problems.
▪ Mr Milburn said the new statistics also revealed a disturbing trend towards long-term unemployment.
▪ That these drugs themselves may actually be adding to that incidence is a disturbing thought.
▪ The pier at the right is also disturbing - because it is an unobtrusive detail.
▪ Yet Sophia was not usually the kind of person to say disturbing things.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Disturbing

Disturb \Dis*turb"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Disturbed; p. pr. & vb. n. Disturbing.] [OE. desturben, destourben, OF. destorber, desturber, destourber, fr. L. disturbare, disturbatum; dis- + turbare to disturb, trouble, turba disorder, tumult, crowd. See Turbid.]

  1. To throw into disorder or confusion; to derange; to interrupt the settled state of; to excite from a state of rest.

    Preparing to disturb With all-cofounding war the realms above.
    --Cowper.

    The bellow's noise disturbed his quiet rest.
    --Spenser.

    The utmost which the discontented colonies could do, was to disturb authority.
    --Burke.

  2. To agitate the mind of; to deprive of tranquillity; to disquiet; to render uneasy; as, a person is disturbed by receiving an insult, or his mind is disturbed by envy.

  3. To turn from a regular or designed course. [Obs.]

    And disturb His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
    --Milton.

    Syn: To disorder; disquiet; agitate; discompose; molest; perplex; trouble; incommode; ruffle.

Wiktionary
disturbing

  1. Causing distress or worry; upsetting or unsettling. v

  2. (present participle of disturb English)

WordNet
disturbing

adj. causing distress or worry or anxiety; "distressing (or disturbing) news"; "lived in heroic if something distressful isolation"; "a disturbing amount of crime"; "a revelation that was most perturbing"; "a new and troubling thought"; "in a particularly worrisome predicament"; "a worrying situation"; "a worrying time" [syn: distressing, distressful, perturbing, troubling, worrisome, worrying]

Usage examples of "disturbing".

Most disturbing was the same appalling indifference to sanitation that Adams knew from Dr.

He stared at Adelaide, with her fierce brown eyes, and her brunette curls, and that disturbing, angry, beautiful face.

The girl with the large eyes was named Alberta James, and she sat third in from the left Weigand, facing everybody - he hoped - who had been in the theatre when Carney Bolton was killed ticked off her name in his mind Slender girl with reddish - brown hair hanging almost to her shoulders, and big, disturbing eyes - that equalled Alberta James.

They are all taking Maladrone, an antimalarial drug that for most fosters disturbing and hallucinogenic dreams.

Typically, a green priest would find such bleakness disturbing, but Arcas felt the desert calling to him.

I remembered at once that I had seen two in the library room of the Atheneum, which I had carefully refrained from disturbing.

What was most disturbing was how he felt when he awoke, it felt as if he had just relived those moments, but this time the emotions were not consistent with how he remembered them before the dream.

Especially disturbing where the memories of his mutilated, suffering soldiers, the time after the Bamah battle, which he caused, he selfishly, ignorantly ordered.

Still, Batu found it disturbing that any of his men fell, for he did not know a single Shou horseman who could boast of hitting such a distant target from a galloping mount.

The bellflower on the rock or the black stone itself, or whatever it might be, exuded a penetrating, strange, disturbing scent, the uncanny symbol of the god shone with a spectral radiance in the dark hall, and on the roof the strange bird sat and from time to time beat its enormous wings so that there was a rustling in the trees like a coming storm.

A pair of black swans glided past his position, disturbing the waters, trembling apart the reflection.

Thelma lay silent in the other hush-bunk, the blanker keeping her snores from disturbing him.

They had arranged a flier crash for Bridgeman by disturbing the autocontrol with a false heterodyne of the guide beam.

We spend the next weeks moving in and out of the cordgrass, disturbing the fiddler crabs, who brandish their colorful outsized claws in warning.

All the rooms of the new house were full to bursting with familiar things made strange and disturbing by their crowdedness and juxtaposition in this new setting, like an unwieldy nightmare into which an entire life has been shuffled out of impersonal malicious glee.