dispute

UK/dɪˈspjuːt/US/ˈdɪ.spjut/

verbB23 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,687 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: disputes, disputed, disputing, disputed

To dispute something is to say out loud that it is not so. You dispute a bill, a border, a referee's decision, a figure in a report.

It is also a noun — a dispute is the argument itself, usually a long formal one: a pay dispute, a border dispute, a legal dispute. That is the register to watch. Neighbours who shout at each other are having a row; neighbours who go to court are in a dispute. And the verb takes the thing, not the person: you dispute the claim, not the man.

Definitions of dispute

1verbdisputeTo say that something stated is not true or not fair.B2~8%
“Nobody disputes that the money went missing; they dispute where it went.”
synonyms: challenge, contest
2nounargumentA formal argument, often a long one.B2~83%
“The pay dispute closed the docks for five weeks.”
3verblogicTo fight over control of something.B2~9%
“Two families disputed the land for a century.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 177 sentences found in the wild and placed 176 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Remember it

dis-PUTE → a law SUIT

Two neighbours in matching suits, standing in court, over one small piece of garden fence.

hooks ontosuit

Also practised as

verbTo argue that something is not so.

Where it comes from

Latin dis-, apart, and putare, to reckon or count up. To dispute is to do the sums apart from each other and get different answers.

Proto-Indo-European
*pewH-
Latin
disputo
Old French
desputer
Middle English
disputen
English, today
dispute

Built from

dis- · Latin — apart
puto · Latin — to reckon, consider, think, originally make clean, clear up
purus · Latin — pure

From Middle English disputen, from Old French desputer, from Latin disputo. From Middle English disputen, from Old French desputer (French disputer), from Latin disputo (“to dispute, discuss, examine, compute, estimate”), from dis- (“apart”) + puto (“to reckon, consider, think, originally make clean, clear up”), related to purus (“pure”). Compare compute, count, impute, repute, amputate, etc.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Ways of Speaking

First appears in chapter 9 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

dispute in the wild

Dispute resolution or dispute settlement is the process of resolving disputes between parties.
Dispute resolution
The term dispute resolution is conflict resolution through legal means.
Dispute resolution
The disputed islands are under Russian administration as the South Kuril District and part of the Kuril District of the Sakhalin Oblast.
Kuril Islands dispute
Japan claims that at least some of the disputed islands are not a part of the Kuril Islands, and thus are not covered by the treaty.
Kuril Islands dispute
The use of the country name "Macedonia" was disputed between the Hellenic Republic and the Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) between 1991 and 2019.
Macedonia naming dispute

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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.

Related words

the puto family

reputation dispute

dispute — used about once every 1,054 pages · #4,687 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of dispute

1verbdisputeTo say that something stated is not true or not fair.B2~8%

“Nobody disputes that the money went missing; they dispute where it went.”

synonyms: challenge, contest

2nounargumentA formal argument, often a long one.B2~83%

“The pay dispute closed the docks for five weeks.”

3verblogicTo fight over control of something.B2~9%

“Two families disputed the land for a century.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 177 sentences found in the wild and placed 176 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.