disappear [LME] The usual sense of disappear, ‘to cease to be visible’, appeared in the late Middle Ages formed from the negative dis- and appear [ME], which was borrowed, via French, from Latin adparere, from ad ‘to’ and parere ‘come into sight’. In the late 20th century English acquired a new construction, in which a person could be ‘disappeared’—abducted or arrested for political reasons and secretly killed or detained without public knowledge. This came from Latin America, especially Argentina, and involves a translation of American Spanish desaparecido, applied to the many people who ‘disappeared’ under military rule in the 1970s.