interfere

English

Alternative forms

• enterfere (obsolete)

Etymology

Old French entreferir, from entre- + ferir (“to hit, to strike”), itself from the Latin verb ferio.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪə(r)

Verb

interfere (third-person singular simple present interferes, present participle interfering, simple past and past participle interfered)

1. (intransitive) To get involved or involve oneself, causing disturbance.

   I always try not to interfere with other people’s personal affairs.

2. (intransitive, physics) (of waves) To be correlated with each other when overlapped or superposed.

   Correlated waves interfere to produce interesting patterns, while uncorrelated waves overlap without interfering.

   Where the radio-wave signals of the two radio stations interfere the listener hears nothing but noise.

3. (mostly of horses) To strike one foot against the opposite foot or ankle in using the legs.

Derived terms

• interference

Translations

to get involved, causing disturbance

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 妨礙 (cmn), 妨碍 (cmn) (fáng'ài), 阻礙 (cmn), 阻碍 (cmn) (zǔ'ài), 干擾 (cmn), 干扰 (cmn) (gānrǎo)

• Finnish: sekaantua (fi), sotkeutua (fi)

• French: se mêler (de) (fr), entraver (fr), perturber (fr)
• German: stören (de)
• Japanese: 妨げる (ja) (さまたげる, samatageru), 干渉する (ja) (かんしょうする, kanshō suru)
• Maori: whawhe (mi)
• Russian: мешать (ru) (mešátʹ) impf., препятствовать (ru) (prepjátstvovatʹ) impf.

to be correlated with each other when overlapped or superposed

• Finnish: interferoida (fi)
• French: interférer (fr)

• Russian: интерферировать (ru) (intɛrferírovatʹ) impf./pf.
• Spanish: interferir (es)

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.

Translations to be checked

• Arabic: عاق (ar) (ʿāqa), عرقل (ar) (ʿárqala)
• Catalan: destorbar (ca), dificultar (ca)
• Chinese:

  Min Nan: trad. 阻礙, simpl. 阻礙 (chó·-gāi)

• Serbo-Croatian: spriječiti (sh), otežavati (sh)
• Dutch: hinderen (nl) (hinder), moeilijk maken (nl) (make difficult)
• Estonian: takistama (et), pidurdama (et), tagasi hoidma (et)
• Georgian: დაბრკოლება (ka) (dabrkoleba), შეფერხება (ka) (šep‘erxeba)
• German: erschweren
• Greek: παρεμποδίζω (el) (parempodízo) (parempodízo)
• Hungarian: meggátol (hu), megakadályoz (hu)
• Italian: impedire (it)

• Japanese: 妨げる (ja) (samatageru)
• Korean: 저지하다 (ko) (jeojihada)
• Latin: obstō (la), officiō (la)
• Norwegian (bokmål): hemme (no)
• Norwegian (nynorsk): hemme (nn)
• Polish: przeszkadzać (pl), powstrzymywać (pl)
• Romanian: împiedica (ro), stânjeni (ro)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: спречити (sh), отежавати (sh)

  Roman: sprečiti (sh), otežavati (sh)

• Spanish: impedir (es)
• Swahili: kinga (sw), kinza (sw)
• Swedish: hindra (sv), försvåra (sv) (to make difficult)
• Thai: กีดขวาง (th) (gèet-kwăang), กีด (th) (gèet)

See also

• busy body
• interferometry

External links

• interference on Wikipedia.Wikipedia:interference

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Portuguese

Verb

interfere

1. third-person singular present indicative of interferir
2. second-person singular imperative of interferir