Library / English Dictionary

DISCOMPOSE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cause to lose one's composure

Synonyms:

discomfit; discompose; disconcert; untune; upset

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Hypernyms (to "discompose" is one way to...):

arouse; elicit; enkindle; evoke; fire; kindle; provoke; raise (call forth (emotions, feelings, and responses))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "discompose"):

enervate; faze; unnerve; unsettle (disturb the composure of)

dissolve (cause to lose control emotionally)

inhibit (make (someone) self-conscious and as a result unable to act naturally)

bemuse; bewilder; discombobulate; throw (cause to be confused emotionally)

abash; embarrass (cause to be embarrassed; cause to feel self-conscious)

anguish; hurt; pain (cause emotional anguish or make miserable)

afflict (cause great unhappiness for; distress)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Sentence example:

The performance is likely to discompose Sue

Derivation:

discomposure (a temperament that is perturbed and lacking in composure)

discomposure (anxious embarrassment)

Credits

 Context examples: 

But how came the hand to discompose you so much, if it was only a letter of business?

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Their shape was very singular and deformed, which a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a thicket to observe them better.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I do not know of any other designs that he had formed; but he was in such a hurry to be gone, and his spirits so greatly discomposed, that I had difficulty in finding out even so much as this.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Between ten and eleven Edmund and Julia walked into the drawing-room, fresh with the evening air, glowing and cheerful, the very reverse of what they found in the three ladies sitting there, for Maria would scarcely raise her eyes from her book, and Lady Bertram was half-asleep; and even Mrs. Norris, discomposed by her niece's ill-humour, and having asked one or two questions about the dinner, which were not immediately attended to, seemed almost determined to say no more.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

We should not have been much discomposed, I dare say, by the appearance of Steerforth himself, but we became in a moment the meekest of the meek before his respectable serving-man.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Every thing in her household arrangements was conducted on the most liberal plan, and excepting a few old city friends, whom, to Lady Middleton's regret, she had never dropped, she visited no one to whom an introduction could at all discompose the feelings of her young companions.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it was but of half an hour: for the horse went about forty feet at every step and trotted so high, that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Had Miss Bingley known what pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose Elizabeth by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in Darcy's opinion, and, perhaps, to remind the latter of all the follies and absurdities by which some part of her family were connected with that corps.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most agreeable to him; and began again.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right fore-hoof, and discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust it better by taking it off and settling it again; whereat, both he and his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised: the latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they both looked with new signs of wonder.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)