Disappear

//dɪsəˈpɪə// verb

verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To vanish. intransitive
  2. 2
    become less intense and fade away gradually wordnet
  3. 3
    To go missing; to become a missing person. intransitive

    "Eighteen years after Jaycee Dugard disappeared in 1991, she was found alive in the summer of 2009."

  4. 4
    get lost, as without warning or explanation wordnet
  5. 5
    To go away; to become lost. intransitive

    "I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields[…]. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair,[…]. My client welcomed the judge […] and they disappeared together into the Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation point shields Mr. Cooke had had made at the sawmill at Beaverton."

Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    cease to exist wordnet
  2. 7
    To make vanish; especially, to abduct or murder for political reasons. euphemistic, often, transitive

    "The Chinese government is well-known for disappearing particularly vocal political dissidents."

  3. 8
    become invisible or unnoticeable wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
vanishdematerializemeltvanishabandonabscond

Antonyms

All antonyms
appear

Example

More examples

"And in the Indian Ocean, some islands of the Maldives will disappear completely beneath the water."

Etymology

From Middle English disapeeren, equivalent to dis- + appear. Displaced native Old English fordwīnan.

Related phrases

disappear into thin airdisappearing actdisappearing carriagedisappearing diseasedisappearing stairsup and disappear

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.