dysfunctional
adjective
Paul C. LightTom EwingWarren E. BuffettChris Mooney
Did you know?
Dysfunctional and dysfunction have been used for almost a hundred years, often in medical writing ("brain dysfunction", "a dysfunctional liver") but also by social scientists ("a dysfunctional city council", "diplomatic dysfunction"). But they only really entered the general vocabulary in the 1980s, when therapists and talk-show hosts began talking about dysfunctional families. The signs of family dysfunction turned out to be numerous, and it soon began to seem as if pretty much all our families could be called dysfunctional.
Examples of dysfunctional in a Sentence
Charlie Fink, Forbes.com, 25 Apr. 2025
The reporter asked about the St. Louis election board, a dysfunctional organization that, by all accounts, Martin had helped turn around in the mid-2000s.
—Jeremy Kohler, ProPublica, 24 Apr. 2025
The four, all onetime allies of Hegseth, describe a dysfunctional atmosphere under the former Fox News host’s leadership.
—Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News, 22 Apr. 2025
The book identifies a host of factors that have thwarted global environmental cooperation, including the Western world’s neoliberal economic ideology, failures to distribute the burdens of adaptation, dysfunctional international institutions, and weak global norms of multilateral problem solving.
—Foreign Affairs, 22 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for dysfunctional
Cite this Entry
“Dysfunctional.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dysfunctional. Accessed 29 Apr. 2025.
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