dispersal

English

Etymology

From disperse +‎ -al.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)səl
• Homophone: disbursal

Noun

dispersal (countable and uncountable, plural dispersals)

1. The act or result of dispersing or scattering; dispersion.
   • 1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 145:

     For a time, Okeh picked up the disk for national dispersal.

   • 2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3:

     Plant breeding is always a numbers game. […] The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, […]. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better. These rarities may be new mutations, or they can be existing ones that are neutral—or are even selected against—in a wild population. A good example is mutations that disrupt seed dispersal, leaving the seeds on the heads long after they are ripe.

2. A dispersal prison.
   • 2012, D. Drake, Prisons, Punishment and the Pursuit of Security:

     Problems of control in dispersals and in other prisons necessarily instigated a multiplicity of working theories to explain the difficulties […]

Derived terms

• codispersal
• dispersalism
• dispersalist
• geodispersal
• nondispersal
• overdispersal
• postdispersal
• predispersal
• radiological dispersal device
• redispersal

 

Translations

the act or result of dispersing or scattering

• Dutch: spreiding (nl) f
• Latin: dissipātiō f
• Russian: рассеивание (ru) (rasseivanije), рассеяние (ru) (rassejanije), рассредоточение (ru) (rassredotočenije)
• Scottish Gaelic: sgaoileadh m
• Swedish: spridning (sv), skingring (sv)

Anagrams

• rapidless