# disperse
## English
### Etymology

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

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /dɪˈspɜːs/
* (General American) IPA: /dɪˈspɝs/
* Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)s
* Audio (UK):(file)
* Hyphenation: dis‧perse
* Homophone: disburse

### Verb

disperse (third-person singular simple present disperses, present participle dispersing, simple past and past participle dispersed)
* (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.
* (transitive, intransitive) To break up and disappear; to dissipate.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:destroy
* (transitive, intransitive) To disseminate.
* (physics, transitive, intransitive) To separate rays of light, etc., according to wavelength; to refract.
* (transitive, intransitive) To distribute throughout.

#### Usage notes

* 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.

#### Derived terms

* dedisperse
* dispersable
* dispersant
* disperser
* dispersingly
* dispersity
* dispersive
* dispersoid
* dispersometer
* nondispersing
* overdisperse
* redisperse
* undispersing

#### Related terms

* dispersal
* dispersible
* dispersion

#### Translations
### Adjective

disperse (comparative more disperse, superlative most disperse)
* 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.

#### Derived terms

* bidisperse
* disperseness
* disperse phase
* heterodisperse
* isodisperse
* monodisperse
* nanodisperse
* paucidisperse
* polydisperse

### Anagrams

* Perseids, despiser, perseids, presides

## French
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /dis.pɛʁs/

### Verb

disperse
* inflection of disperser:
** first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
** second-person singular imperative

### Anagrams

* perdisse, prédises, prédisse, présides

## German
### Pronunciation

* Audio:(file)

### Adjective

disperse
* inflection of dispers:
** strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
** strong nominative/accusative plural
** weak nominative all-gender singular
** weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

## Italian
### Etymology 1
#### Adjective

disperse
* feminine plural of disperso

#### Participle

disperse f pl
* feminine plural of disperso

### Etymology 2
#### Noun

disperse f pl
* plural of dispersa

### Etymology 3
#### Verb

disperse
* third-person singular past historic of disperdere

### Anagrams

* depressi, perdessi, predisse

## Latin
### Pronunciation

* (Classical Latin) IPA: /disˈper.se/, [d̪ɪs̠ˈpɛrs̠ɛ]
* (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /disˈper.se/, [d̪isˈpɛrse]

### Participle

disperse
* vocative masculine singular of dispersus

### References

* “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.

## Portuguese
### Verb

disperse
* inflection of dispersar:
** first/third-person singular present subjunctive
** third-person singular imperative

## Spanish
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /disˈpeɾse/ [d̪isˈpeɾ.se]
* Rhymes: -eɾse
* Syllabification: dis‧per‧se

### Verb

disperse
* inflection of dispersar:
** first/third-person singular present subjunctive
** third-person singular imperative