disturbed

1. 1
   adjective

   Deeply alarmed or shaken by something shocking or upsetting.

   The jury seemed visibly disturbed by the graphic photographs.

   Many readers were disturbed by the novel's brutal final chapter.

   Similarupset, shaken, troubled, unsettled, alarmed

   Oppositeunperturbed, untroubled, unmoved, calm

2. 2
   adjective

   Affected by mental illness, severe psychosis, or neurosis.

   The clinic specializes in treating emotionally disturbed teenagers.

   A profoundly disturbed young man was admitted to the psychiatric ward overnight.

   Similartroubled, unbalanced, unstable

   Oppositestable, balanced

   Note

   Here the word names a condition rather than a passing reaction. It sits comfortably before a noun, as in a disturbed child or a disturbed patient, or after an adverb naming what is affected, as in mentally disturbed. Placement is a useful test. The "shocked" meaning usually describes a reaction to something, so a disturbed child and a child disturbed by the news are quite different statements.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of disturb.

   A sudden knock disturbed the quiet of the library.

   The hikers disturbed a nest of wasps along the trail.

   Note

   One regular -ed form does three jobs: the simple past (a knock disturbed the quiet), the perfect (has disturbed) and the passive (was disturbed). Most uses are transitive and take an object, such as the quiet, a nest or someone's thoughts. In the passive the line to the adjectives blurs. She was disturbed by the news reads both as a verb and as the "shocked" meaning.

4. 4
   adjective

   Having been moved, altered, or changed from an original condition.

   The disturbed sediment made it hard to read the original layers.

   Excavators noted that the disturbed earth contained mixed and broken artifacts.

   Similardisrupted, altered

   Oppositeundisturbed, intact, pristine

   Note

   A physical sense, used of things rather than people. Disturbed soil is ground whose original arrangement has been moved by digging, erosion or some other intervention. Geologists and archaeologists rely on the distinction, since disturbed layers can no longer be read in their original order. Applied to ground or sediment, the word carries none of the psychological weight of the clinical meaning.

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