desaparecido

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Spanish desaparecido.

Why this word is great

DESAPARECIDO — [Noun] A person forcibly disappeared during military dictatorships, particularly in Argentina’s Dirty War or the Philippines under Marcos, their absence a silent testament to state terror. Unadapted borrowing from Spanish desaparecido ("disappeared"), from desaparecer ("to disappear"), formed by des- ("undoing") + aparecer ("to appear"). Unlike "missing person" (a neutral absence) or "victim of enforced disappearance" (a clinical designation), desaparecido is a word heavy with mourning and defiance, whispered in vigils, etched on memorials. It is the empty chair at the dinner table, the photograph clutched at a protest, the unanswered cry of "¿Dónde están?"—the unbearable truth that some silences are not absences, but crimes.

noun

One of the people who disappeared during the 1976-1983 military rule in Argentina, presumed to have been killed by members of the regime.“And Timerman's memoir, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, was the book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the desaparecido: the disappeared one or, to invest it with the more sinister and grisly past participle with which it came into the world, the one who has been “disappeared.””
One of the people who disappeared during the 1972-1981 martial law in the Philippines, presumed to be killed by the military.