disperse

From Middle French disperser, from Latin dispersus, past participle of dispergō (“to scatter abroad, disperse”), from dis- (“apart”) + spargō (“to scatter”); see sparse.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɪˈspɜːs/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /dɪˈspɝs/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)s

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: dis‧perse
• Homophone: disburse

disperse (third-person singular simple present disperses, present participle dispersing, simple past and past participle dispersed)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To scatter in different directions.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:disperse

   The Jews are dispersed among all nations.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 15:7, column 1:

     The lippes of the wiſe diſperſe knowledge: but the heart of the fooliſh, doeth not ſo.

2. (transitive, intransitive) To break up and disappear; to dissipate.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:destroy

3. (transitive, intransitive) To disseminate.
4. (physics, transitive, intransitive) To separate rays of light, etc., according to wavelength; to refract.
5. (transitive, intransitive) To distribute throughout.

• Do not confuse with the monetary word disburse, despite the two being near homophones and having a degree of semantic similarity (in which disbursed money may be dispersed among expenses). A mnemonic to help make the difference obvious (which uses a cognate of each word) is that dĭs-burs-ing is taking money out of the purse, whereas dĭ-spers-ing causes something to be sparsely scattered.

• dispersal
• dispersible
• dispersion

disperse (comparative more disperse, superlative most disperse)

1. Scattered or spread out.
   • 1998, James-Yves Roger, Technologies for the Information Society: Developments and Opportunities:

     Australia itself is a very wide and very disperse country, where the distance problems significantly affect also the "internal" customer-supplier chains.

   • 2014, Didier J. Dubois, Readings in Fuzzy Sets for Intelligent Systems, page 85:

     In particular, a very crisp quantifier such as “for all,” “there exists,” “at least 50 percent” tend to have less disperse weighting vectors while fuzzier quantifiers such as many tend to have a more disperse weighting vector.

• Perseids, despiser, perseids, presides

• IPA^(key): /dis.pɛʁs/

disperse

1. inflection of disperser:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

• perdisse, prédises, prédisse, présides

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disperse

1. inflection of dispers:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

disperse

1. feminine plural of disperso

disperse f pl

1. feminine plural of disperso

disperse f pl

1. plural of dispersa

disperse

1. third-person singular past historic of disperdere

• depressi, perdessi, predisse

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /disˈper.se/, [d̪ɪs̠ˈpɛrs̠ɛ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /disˈper.se/, [d̪isˈpɛrse]

disperse

1. vocative masculine singular of dispersus

• “disperse”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “disperse”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• disperse in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

disperse

1. inflection of dispersar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• IPA^(key): /disˈpeɾse/ [d̪isˈpeɾ.se]
• Rhymes: -eɾse
• Syllabification: dis‧per‧se

disperse

1. inflection of dispersar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative