Other forms: disconnected, disconnecting, disconnects
To disconnect is to break a connection. Disconnect the power, disconnected the call, disconnect from work.
It covers cables, calls, supplies and, increasingly, the deliberate act of stepping away from screens — disconnect for the weekend. As a noun, a disconnect is a mismatch: a disconnect between policy and practice, which is business language and now very common. Note disconnected, meaning both unplugged and incoherent.
1verbdisconnectTo break a connection.
“Always disconnect the power supply before you open the back of the computer.”
2nounmismatchA mismatch between two things.
“There's a disconnect between what the company says and what it actually does.”
disconnect is a breaking of connection.
Latin
connectō
English
connect
English, today
disconnect
From dis- + connect. connect comes from Latin connectō. From Latin connecto (“fasten together”), from con- + nectere, which is cognate with English knot and English knit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA