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abruptly

US/əˈbɹʌp.li/
adverbB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,714 of 15,258leans written

Abruptly means with sudden sharpness, cutting things off mid-flow. The conversation stopped, and nobody had finished a sentence.

The word carries a hint of rudeness or alarm, which is what separates it from simply suddenly, since something done abruptly interrupts an expectation. It attaches to stopped, ended, left, turned and changed. Roads and paths do it too, and a track that ends abruptly leaves you standing in a field. The adjective abrupt describes manner as well as movement, and an abrupt reply is a curt one.

Definitions of abruptly

  1. 1adverbabruptlySuddenly and unexpectedly, breaking the flow.B2+

    “He stood up abruptly and left the room.”

Also accepted in games: suddenly

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *Hrewp-

  2. Latin

    abruptus

  3. English

    abrupt

  4. English, today

    abruptly

Built from

  • abrumpō · Latin — break off
  • ab · Latin — from, away from
  • rumpō · Latin — to break

From abrupt + -ly. abrupt Borrowed from Latin abruptus. First attested in 1583. Borrowed from Latin abruptus (“broken off”), perfect passive participle of abrumpō (“break off”), formed from ab (“from, away from”) + rumpō (“to break”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

abruptly in the wild

  • Colic or cholic () is a form of pain that starts and stops abruptly.

    Colic

  • In January 2002, however, NASA abruptly cancelled this mission, mainly due to concerns about costs, which had grown from US$160 million initially to US$220 million.

    Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer

  • The river travels east-northeast through the town of New Boston, entering Weare, where it turns abruptly south to reenter New Boston and join the South Branch.

    Middle Branch Piscataquog River

  • Triton was a digital delivery and digital rights management service created by Digital Interactive Streams, which abruptly went out of business in early October 2006.

    Triton (content delivery)

  • The road from Batu Pahat town ends abruptly at Kampung Minyak Beku.

    Minyak Beku

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the rumpō family

interruptcorrupt

abruptly — used about once every 3,827 pages · #8,714 · point at the bar for the others