adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1. 1
   Causing disruption or unrest.

   "Children who exhibit disruptive behaviour may be expelled from school."

2. 2
   Causing major change, as in a market.

   "disruptive technologies"

Adjective

1. 1
   characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

ablativebadbiodegradablecorrosivedecomposabledecomposing

Antonyms

All antonyms

non-disruptivenondisruptive

Example

More examples

"Arguments can be disruptive at work."

Etymology

From disrupt + -ive. In the business sense popularized by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower, see 1995 citation.

Related phrases

disruptive selection

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