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
Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 July 2025
Season 17 is set to bring plenty of new misadventures to America's most dysfunctional friend group.
—Kilty Cleary, MSNBC Newsweek, 9 July 2025
Need to give your brain the night off and watch a soap opera about a desperate, dysfunctional and good-looking fishing family in North Carolina?
—Randy Myers, Mercury News, 20 June 2025
Even still, California lawmakers press on with obvious boondoggles like the high-speed rail project and do nothing about the bloated and dysfunctional K-12 system that continues to lag the rest of the nation.
—The Editorial Board, Oc Register, 15 June 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 Jul. 2025.
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