It's a word most people recognize and vaguely understand, but I was curious about the etymology.
From French déranger, from Old French desrengier (“throw into disorder”), from des- + rengier (“to put into line”), from reng (“line, row”), from a Germanic source. See rank (noun).
Coming from the French is what left it out of my wheelhouse. But it makes sense - disrupting a rank, creating disorder.
The Google Ngram viewer for usage in books shows several generations of quietude followed by a rise in recent decades. I suspect once the 2025-26 data is entered that there will be an upward spike. If there is an equivalent tool for monitoring usage in blogs and social media, I should think the numbers will have gone parabolic this year.
The synonyms are pretty familiar -



No comments:
Post a Comment