A disciplinary is the formal process an employer uses when rules are broken. A disciplinary hearing, face a disciplinary, disciplinary action.
In British workplaces it is a defined procedure with set stages — investigation, hearing, decision, appeal — and the right to be accompanied at the hearing. Getting the procedure wrong is itself grounds for a claim, whatever the underlying conduct. As an adjective it also means relating to an academic discipline, which is a quite separate sense: interdisciplinary research. Note discipline, disciplined.
1noundisciplinaryThe formal process used when workplace rules are broken.
“After shouting at a customer, he was called into a disciplinary with his manager.”
2adjectiverelatingRelating to a field of study.
“The project brought together experts from different disciplinary backgrounds, such as biology and economics.”
disciplinary is a formal procedure.
Latin disciplina meant instruction or training, from discere, to learn. Discipline meant teaching long before it meant punishment, and disciple is the same word — a learner.
Latin
disciplina — instruction, teaching, field of study, habit
Medieval Latin
disciplinarius
English, today
disciplinary
From Medieval Latin disciplinarius, from Latin disciplina (“instruction, teaching, field of study, habit”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA