"act or fact of disappearing; a ceasing to appear or exist," 1712; see disappear + -ance.
Entries linking to disappearance
disappear v.
early 15c., disaperen, "cease to be visible, vanish from sight, be no longer seen," from dis- "do the opposite of" + appear. Earlier was disparish (early 15c.), from French disparaiss-, stem of desapparoistre (Modern French disparaître).
Transitive sense, "cause to disappear," is from 1897 in chemistry; by 1948 of inconvenient persons. Related: Disappeared; disappearing; disappears. Slang disappearing act "fact of absconding, action of getting away," is attested by 1884, probably originally a reference to magic shows.
-ance
word-forming element attached to verbs to form abstract nouns of process or fact (convergence from converge), or of state or quality (absence from absent); ultimately from Latin -antia and -entia, which depended on the vowel in the stem word, from PIE *-nt-, adjectival suffix.
Latin present-participle endings for verbs stems in -a- were distinguished from those in -i- and -e-. Hence Modern English protestant, opponent, obedient from Latin protestare, opponere, obedire.
As Old French evolved from Latin, these were leveled to -ance, but later French borrowings from Latin (some of them subsequently passed to English) used the appropriate Latin form of the ending, as did words borrowed by English directly from Latin (diligence,absence).
English thus inherited a confused mass of words from French (crescent/croissant), and further confused it since c. 1500 by restoring -ence selectively in some forms of these words to conform with Latin. Thus dependant, but independence, etc.