Standard Lemma guide

disgregation

noun · 2 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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1

noun

Meaning 1

Separation; scattering.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: countable, uncountable

Examples

  • 2006, Raquel Hervás, Pablo Gervás, Agent-Based Solutions for Natural Language Generation Tasks, Roque Marín, Eva Onaindía, Alberto Buarín, José Santos (editors), Current Topics in Artificial Intelligence: 11th Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence, CAEPIA 2005, Springer, LNAI 4177, page 109, If the first one is called before the second one, very few disgregations will be performed on the text, since the concepts initially have no associated list of attributes.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

2

noun

Meaning 2

A measure of the separation of the particles of a system; an early formulation of entropy.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: countable, historical, obsolete, uncountable

Topics: natural-sciences, physical-sciences, physics, thermodynamics

Examples

  • 1868, R. Clausius, On the Second Fundamental Theorem of the Mechanical Theory of Heat, [1867, Lecture to the German Scientific Association], The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, page 408, The disgregation of a body is consequently, among the three states of aggregation, least in the solid state, greater in the liquid state, and greatest of all in the gaseous state. In the last condition it can still be increased by the molecules separating further from each other—that is, by the gas expanding to a larger volume. In like manner, the decomposition of a chemically compound body into its elements is in general accompanied by an increase of disgregation. By help of this conception the effect of heat can be simply expressed by saying that heat tends to increase the disgregation of bodies.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin disgregātiō, from dis- (“apart”) + grex (“flock”). The thermodynamics sense was introduced in 1862 by German physicist Rudolf Clausius in his formulation of what is now called the second law of thermodynamics.