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Definition of "disperse" []

  • To drive off or scatter in different directions: The police dispersed the crowd. (verb-transitive)
  • To strew or distribute widely: The airplane dispersed the leaflets over the city. (verb-transitive)
  • To cause to vanish or disappear. See Synonyms at scatter. (verb-transitive)
  • To disseminate (knowledge, for example). (verb-transitive)
  • To separate (light) into spectral rays. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "disperse" in a sentence
  • "They include Brenna Bell, an Oregon-based attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, who claims she was arrested while trying to obey police orders to disperse from a peaceful demonstration."
  • "With the last investigation, however, we have gone beyond the field of actual colloid chemistry, although the solution of a radioactive substance, e.g. polonium chloride, can naturally be called a disperse system, though more accurately it is molecular-disperse because the substance dissolved in the solvent occurs here as molecules, not as molecular aggregates, as is the case in a colloidal solution."
  • "London cops have been given the power to "disperse" anyone under 16, gathered in groups of two or more, from almost all of central London, after 9PM."