interrupts

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of interrupt.

   The committee chair politely interrupts any speaker who runs over time.

   A sudden noise interrupts her concentration whenever she studies.

   Note

   The -s form carries all three uses of the verb. It works with or without an object: she interrupts, or she interrupts the speaker. It can mean breaking up a stretch of space or time, as when a line of trees interrupts a flat landscape. In computing it takes the machine as its object: a keyboard interrupts the processor, the action behind the noun for those signals.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of interrupt.

   The processor handles thousands of interrupts every second without stalling.

   Faulty wiring generated a flood of spurious interrupts that froze the machine.

   Note

   A count noun that belongs to the machine room. The noun interrupt has only its computing meaning: a signal that makes a processor set aside its work and attend to a condition. So interrupts are counted, handled, generated and arrive in floods. When a person cuts into a conversation, English uses interruptions instead. The same spelling also serves the verb's present-tense form.

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