Other forms: disturbed, disturbing, disturbs
To disturb someone is to break into their quiet: their sleep, their work, their thinking. The knock at the door while you are on a call, the phone buzzing at three in the morning, the little card you hang on a hotel handle that says do not disturb.
The other half of the word is about the mind. News can disturb you, which means it leaves you unsettled and shaken, and disturbing is the adjective for the film or the photograph you cannot get out of your head. You can disturb things as well as people: do not disturb the soil, the nesting birds, the evidence. Police charge people with disturbing the peace, and a disturbance is the noise or trouble itself. Keep it clear of upset in the crying sense and of damage in the breaking sense; disturb is interruption and unease.
1verbdisturbTo interrupt someone and break their rest, work or concentration.
“Please do not disturb your sister while she is studying.”
synonyms: bother, interrupt
2verbunsettleTo make someone feel worried or upset.
“The photographs from the flood disturbed her for days.”
3verbmoveTo move something out of its place or its settled arrangement.
“Try not to disturb the nest while you clear out the shed.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: bother
Disturb travelled from Latin disturbare through Old French destorber and Anglo-Norman distourber into Middle English destourben. The Latin is a strengthened form of turbare, "to throw into disorder", from a Proto-Indo-European root *twerH-, "to rotate, swirl, move around". A disturbed room is a stirred-up room.
Proto-Indo-European
*twerH-
Latin
disturbare
Old French
destorber
Anglo-Norman
distourber
Middle English
destourben
English, today
disturb
Built from
From Middle English destourben, from Anglo-Norman distourber and Old French destorber, from Latin disturbare, intensifying for turbare (“to throw into disorder”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European twerH-, (s)turH- (“to rotate, swirl, twirl, move around”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA