Disruptive means breaking up the normal running of things. Disruptive behaviour, disruptive technology, disruptive to the class.
In school reports it is a criticism and in business writing it is praise, which is a strange fate for one word. The business sense comes from Christensen's work in the 1990s on how cheap poor products displace established ones, and it is used far more loosely than he meant. Note disrupt; and that the Latin means to break apart.
1adjectivedisruptiveBreaking up the normal running of things.
“The disruptive pupil was moved to another class after shouting during lessons.”
disruptive is a quality of interruption.
Disrupt plus -ive, from Latin disrumpere, to break apart. Rupture, erupt and bankrupt come from the same breaking.
Proto-Indo-European
*Hrewp-
Latin
disruptus
English
disrupt
English, today
disruptive
Built from
From disrupt + -ive. In the business sense popularized by Clayton Christensen and Joseph Bower, see 1995 citation. disrupt Latin disruptus, from disrumpo, commonly dirumpo (“to break or burst asunder”), from dis-, di- (“apart, asunder”) + rumpo (“to break”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA