disappear
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /dɪsəˈpɪə/
ipa: /dɪsəˈpɪɹ/
ipa: /dɪsəˈpiːɹ/
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
Forms: form: disappears
form: disappearing
form: disappeared
form: disappeared
Etymology: From Middle English disapeeren, equivalent to dis- + appear. Displaced native Old English fordwīnan.
Senses: synonyms: dematerialize
vanish
perish
antonyms: appear
glosses: To vanish.
examples: text: Eighteen years after Jaycee Dugard disappeared in 1991, she was found alive in the summer of 2009.
glosses: To go missing; to become a missing person.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
text: A turban and loincloth soaked in blood had been found; also a staff. These properties were known to have belonged to a toddy drawer. He had disappeared.
ref: 1927, F. E. Penny, chapter 4, in Pulling the Strings:
glosses: To go away; to become lost.
examples: text: The Chinese government is well-known for disappearing particularly vocal political dissidents.
text: "Did they disappear him?"
 "I don’t know."
 "What will you do if they decide to disappear you?"
ref: 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “Kid Sister”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 416:
text: Now a new hunt is under way to find a grave believed to contain the remains of some of those who were “disappeared” at Colonia Dignidad.
ref: 2018 May 2, Marella Oppenheim, “Excavations at Chile torture site offer new hope for relatives of disappeared”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
text: "It's such an honoring for Native people in this country, when we've been so disappeared and disregarded," Harjo says.
ref: 2019 June 19, Lynn Neary, Patrick Jarenwattananon, quoting Joy Harjo, “Joy Harjo Becomes The First Native American U.S. Poet Laureate”, in npr:
text: The book centres on Eilish Stack, a scientist, mother of four and wife to a teacher trade unionist who has been disappeared by the secret police.
ref: 2023 December 2, Frederick Studemann, “Civilisation is so easily lost”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 11:
text: Yet after her brother was detained and disappeared by Israeli forces at a checkpoint as he evacuated south months ago, Ms. Nabil, like others, fears moving south.
ref: 2024 October 25, Ghada Abdulfattah and Taylor Luck, “Under deadly Israeli siege, north Gaza residents face terrifying ultimatum”, in The Christian Science Monitor:
coordinate_terms: suicide#English:_transitive, euphemistic
glosses: To make vanish; especially, to abduct or murder for political reasons.
Derived terms: disappearable
disappearer
disappearess
disappearing act
disappearing carriage
disappearing disease
disappearingly
disappearing stairs
disappear into thin air
nondisappearing
redisappear
undisappearing
up and disappear
Related terms: disappearance