dysfunctional
/dɪsfˈʌŋkʃənəl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.36 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
4
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Not performing its proper or intended function.
adj
Functioning incorrectly or abnormally; especially, designating of a business, family or social group with harmful, aberrant, strange or abnormal behavior.
Example Sentences
- "Live dysfunctional, likely die dysfunctional; live eufunctional, likely die eufunctional."
- "Never trust in the partly unscrupulous and partly dysfunctional state apparatus."
- "A former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces said that Netanyahu should “resign now”, while a former intelligence official described the government as “dysfunctional”."
- "It is difficult to find the right words for what has happened in the five years since the May 2018 timetable changes exposed the very dysfunctional nature of the franchise system set up by the privatisation process of the 1990s."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dews-? Proto-Indo-European *dus- Proto-Hellenic *dus- Ancient Greek δῠσ- (dŭs-)der. New Latin dys-der. English dys- Proto-Indo-European *bʰewg-der. Proto-Italic *fungōr Latin fungor Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *-Hō Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō Proto-Italic *-tiō Latin -tiō Latin fūnctiō Old French fonction Middle French functionbor. English function English dysfunction Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālisbor. Old French -albor. ▲ Latin -ālis Old French -elbor. ▲ Latin -ālisbor. Middle English -al English -al English dysfunctional From dysfunction + -al.
Inflected Forms
more dysfunctional (comparative)
most dysfunctional (superlative)