# interrupt

Pronunciation: say "in-tuh-RUPT" /ˌɪntəˈɹʌpt/

## Verb

1. To disturb or halt an ongoing action or process, or the person carrying it out, by suddenly breaking in, especially by speaking.
   - Simple: To stop someone or something suddenly, often by speaking before they finish.
   - _A fire alarm interrupted the lecture halfway through._
   - _It's considered rude to interrupt while someone else is speaking._
2. To divide or separate something, or to break the monotony of an otherwise uniform expanse or sequence.
   - Simple: To divide or break up something, so it is not all one piece or all the same.
   - _Narrow canals interrupt the city, separating one island district from the next._
   - _The long stretch of desert was interrupted only by an occasional gas station._
4. To signal to a computer that an exceptional condition has occurred and must be handled.
   - Simple: To send a signal that tells a computer to stop and handle a special problem or event.
   - _The keyboard controller interrupts the CPU each time a key is pressed._
   - _A failing sensor will interrupt the flight computer so the fault can be handled at once._

## Noun

Pronunciation: say "IN-tuh-rupt" /ˈɪntəˌɹʌpt/

3. An event or signal that causes a computer or other device to temporarily stop what it is doing and attend to a particular condition.
   - Simple: A signal that makes a computer stop its current task and deal with something important first.
   - _The operating system handles each interrupt before returning control to the running program._
   - _Hardware interrupts from the disk controller signal that a data transfer is complete._

## Origin

From Middle English interrupten, from Latin interruptus, the past participle of interrumpere ("to break apart or off"), formed from inter ("between") and rumpere ("to break").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/interrupt (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).