DISENGAGEMENT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does disengagement mean? 

• DISENGAGEMENT (noun)
  The noun DISENGAGEMENT has 2 senses:

1. the act of releasing from an attachment or connection

2. to break off a military action with an enemy

  Familiarity information: DISENGAGEMENT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DISENGAGEMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of releasing from an attachment or connection

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

detachment; disengagement

Hypernyms ("disengagement" is a kind of...):

separation (the act of dividing or disconnecting)

Derivation:

disengage (become free)

disengage (release from something that holds fast, connects, or entangles)

Sense 2

Meaning:

To break off a military action with an enemy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

disengagement; fallback; pullout

Hypernyms ("disengagement" is a kind of...):

retreat ((military) withdrawal of troops to a more favorable position to escape the enemy's superior forces or after a defeat)

Domain category:

armed forces; armed services; military; military machine; war machine (the military forces of a nation)

 Context examples 

She paused over it for some time with indignant astonishment; then read it again and again; but every perusal only served to increase her abhorrence of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against him, that she dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound Marianne still deeper by treating their disengagement, not as a loss to her of any possible good but as an escape from the worst and most irremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled man, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most important.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)