Disconnect (noun)

[Li'l Bull]

Hi, native speakers of English!

Are you familiar with the use of "disconnect" as a noun? I've just heard the following and I'm a bit puzzled:

"A lot of people in Spain blame the banks, in part, for the economic crisis here. After all, it was the banks that lent the money which fuelled the property boom here which later went bust. And there is a disconnect for those people between that and the idea of pumping tens of billions of euros, both of eurozone and taxpayers' money, into the banks."

I take it to mean "a lack of connection" or "a lack of logic" (in this context), but the word as such does not appear in the dictionary (the noun from the verb "disconnect" is supposed to be "disconnection").

Thank you in advance.

 

[xqby]

I think I would prefer "disconnect" to "disconnection" if using it in the sense of a feeling of alienation.
Dictionary.com has it if you scroll down a bit, as does wiktionary.org; there's examples of its use in the Corpus of Contemporary American English as far back as 1992.

 

[Keith Bradford]

I think this is a recent innovation. Economists seem prone to using verbs as nouns; you often hear spend and ask used in this way, too.

For the time being, I suggest you stick with "a lack of connection" or "disconnection" and wait until the world catches up.

 

[Li'l Bull]

Thanks a lot, xqby.

Do you think "disparity" could be used instead in my sentence?

 

[sound shift]

As well as this thread, you might find the WR thread titled "'Disconnect' as a noun" useful.