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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

interrupt.

To disturb or halt (an ongoing process or action, or the person performing it) by interfering suddenly, especially by speaking.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˌɪntəˈɹʌpt/
  1. To disturb or halt (an ongoing process or action, or the person performing it) by interfering suddenly, especially by speaking.

    ambitransitive
    A maverick politician repeatedly interrupted the debate by shouting.
  2. To divide; to separate; to break the monotony of.

    transitive
    The evenness of the road was not interrupted by a single hill.
  3. To assert to (a computer) that an exceptional condition must be handled.

    transitive
    The packet receiver circuit interrupted the microprocessor.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English interrupten, derived from Latin interruptus, past participle of interrumpere (“to break apart/off, interrupt”), from inter (“between”) + rumpere (“to break”).

noun/ˌɪntəˈɹʌpt//ˈɪntəˌɹʌpt/
  1. An event that causes a computer or other device to temporarily cease what it was doing and attend to a condition.

    The interrupt caused the packet handler routine to run.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English interrupten, derived from Latin interruptus, past participle of interrumpere (“to break apart/off, interrupt”), from inter (“between”) + rumpere (“to break”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.