perturbed
Americanadjective
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feeling or showing great concern or mental or emotional upset.
The heaviness of his step and the perturbed expression on his face told us that the captain was not in the best of moods.
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greatly disordered or deranged.
He keeps using the same nonsensical phrases and the same perturbed logic, with no sense of the context of the discussion.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of perturbed
Explanation
Imagine a couple of snakes getting loose in a pet shop, and the manager running around trying to round up the snakes and calm down the customers, and you'll picture a perturbed person. Perturbed means flustered and confused. When you're perturbed, you're upset by something, and rattled enough by it to be thrown off your usual calmness into a state of confusion. In astronomy, perturbation is defined as "the effects on a large body when it is subjected to gravitational effects from more than one other large body." When a planet is perturbed in astronomy, it is pulled in different directions by strong forces, which is a great metaphor for what happens to a person who is perturbed.
Vocabulary lists containing perturbed
A Wrinkle in Time
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Intermediate, List 1
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Whenever grief has perturbed him, Caballero has processed it through creativity.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
I obviously was perturbed by it, but I acted like I wasn’t.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 21, 2026
He talked in friendly terms about the western allies that had been most perturbed by his social media posts.
From BBC ● Jan. 21, 2026
More curiously, even though U.S. high-yield spreads are at post-1998 lows, few investors seemed to be unduly perturbed here.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 18, 2025
Von Marsh looked perturbed for a moment, then simply shook her head.
From "Dactyl Hill Squad" by Daniel José Older
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.