Interrupt

Pronunciation

Origin

From Latin interruptus, from interrumpere ("to break apart, break to pieces, break off, interrupt"), from inter ("between") + rumpere ("to break").

Full definition of interrupt

Verb

1. To disturb or halt an ongoing process or action by interfering suddenly.
• ShakespeareDo not interrupt me in my course.
• 1918, W. B. Maxwell, The Mirror and the Lamp Chapter 3, One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”  He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis … interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.
2. A maverick politician repeatedly interrupted the debate by shouting.
3. To divide; to separate; to break the monotony of.The evenness of the road was not interrupted by a single hill.
4. (computing) To assert to a computer that an exceptional condition must be handled.
   The packet receiver circuit interrupted the microprocessor.

Antonyms

• continue
• resume

Related terms

• interrupter
• interruption

Noun

1. (computing) An event that causes a computer to temporarily cease what it was doing and attend to a conditionThe interrupt caused the packet handler routine to run.

Derived terms

• hardware interrupt
• interrupt handler
• non-maskable interrupt, NMI
• software interrupt