perturb vs disturb

perturb

Definitions

verb

  1. disturb in mind or make uneasy or cause to be worried or alarmed
  2. cause a celestial body to deviate from a theoretically regular orbital motion, especially as a result of interposed or extraordinary gravitational pull
  3. throw into great confusion or disorder
  4. disturb or interfere with the usual path of an electron or atom

Examples

This 31-day period of perturbations probably has a great deal more to do with things that go bump in the night than many care to admit in front of their friends and family.

What I find highly ironic and, indeed, perturbing, is that U.S. trade laws have in their application proven much more effective in inhibiting legitimate, cross-border, long-standing supplier-customer transactions carried on within a Canada-U.S. free trade environment than they have in dealing with these "dump and jump" boatloads of predatory imports.

I was perturbed at his apparent immaturity.

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disturb

Definitions

verb

  1. move deeply
  2. tamper with
  3. destroy the peace or tranquility of
  4. change the arrangement or position of
  5. damage as if by shaking or jarring

Examples

Don't disturb the patient's wounds by moving him too rapidly!

To equate Tim McVeigh as a patriot is the mark of a sick and disturbed mind.

The calced Augustinians also made their elections -- but not so quickly that we could avoid sending to them to remind them not to allow the disturbances of other times to occur in their chapter -- by having made them beforehand through their devotion to the outgoing provincial, who managed the succession for another as worthy as he.

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