unsettling

comparative more unsettling · superlative most unsettling

1. That makes one troubled or uneasy; disquieting or distressing.

   More unsettling was the origin story of the infamous tell-all book Princess in Love. Diana claimed to be outraged in 1994 when Daily Express journalist Anna Pasternak spilled the beans of her affair with former army officer James Hewitt[…]

   April 5 2022, Tina Brown, “How Princess Diana’s Dance With the Media Impacted William and Harry”, in Vanity Fair

plural unsettlings

1. The weakening of some previously established system or norm.

   But reconstructing theory has proved more problematic than feminists might have hoped, even as their efforts played an important if sometimes overlooked part in post-modern unsettlings of theories in the West.

   2013, Krishna Sen, Maila Stivens, Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, page 19

   1 more example

   A farmer in Hampshire was sorely distressed by the unsettling of his barn. However straightly over-night he laid his sheaves on the threshing-floor for the application of the morning's flail, when morning came, all was topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, though the door remained locked, and there was no sign whatever of irregular entry.

   1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 305

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of unsettle