Disruptorはいい意味で「破壊者」

英語学習はまずは基礎的な表現を固めるのが重要で、辞書に載っていない表現をあまり気にすることはないと自分では思います。ただ、TOEIC900や英検1級レベルになり、ネイティブの素材を普通に理解できるようになりたいと思ったら、それはそれで違った取り組みが求められることでしょう。言葉は生き物で時代によって意味合いも変わっていくからです。

今週の日経ビジネスは、テスラのイーロン・マスクが特集されていました。

秩序の破壊者 イーロン・マスク
テスラの先に抱く野望

PART 1
巨人たちを脅かす 危険な革命児
PART 2
大風呂敷に隠された したたかさ
PART 3
宇宙を100倍身近にする
人類の危機を救う 英雄の条件

イーロン・マスク氏 インタビュー
企業を成長させるより 世界に役立ちたい

「秩序の破壊者」とついていますが、英語ではdisruptor/disrupterとなるでしょうか。イーロン・マスクは、CNBCのLIST: 2014 DISRUPTOR 50とVanity FairのNew Establishmentでいずれも一位に選ばれています。ちなみにCNBCはdisruptorを、Vanity Fairはdisrupterの方を使っていました。Vanity Fairのこのリストはブログでも紹介させてもらいましたが、英文メデイアでは以下のように取り上げています。


Meet America's new establishment: Vanity Fair publishes its annual list of cultural movers and shakers
The 20th anniversary of Vanity Fair's New Establishment List
Rupert Murdoch comes top in poll of 'The Powers that Be'
Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk comes top in 'The Disrupters' list
By MAILONLINE REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 06:39 GMT, 11 September 2014 | UPDATED: 08:48 GMT, 11 September 2014

６月のCNBCと９月のVanity Fairの記事をそれぞれみてみます。

1. SpaceX
Reusable rockets and human spaceflight

Founder: Elon Musk (CEO)
Date launched: 2002
Funding: $245.5 million
Industries disrupted: Aerospace and Defense, Transportation
Disrupting: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital Sciences
Competitors: Andrews Space, Blue Origin, SSL

No one can ever accuse Elon Musk of thinking small. As co-founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, he reinvented the idea of the electric car and took the company public in 2010. Now, as founder and CEO of SpaceX, Musk's company designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.

SpaceX's founding and continued success comes at a time when private companies are entering the space market, an endeavor long associated with—and controlled by—the government. The 3,000-employee company is flying cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. Its Dragon spacecraft was designed with the intention of carrying astronauts, and now, under a $440 million agreement with NASA, SpaceX is making modifications to make the Dragon crew-ready.

The company is also delivering satellites into space for commercial customers and has booked more than 50 additional cargo and satellite flights for paying customers through 2017. Musk's plans for the future are even grander. The company is in the midst of developing the Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket, according to the company. The hope: to someday take astronauts and other humans to a colony on Mars.

How did you come up with your big idea?
"We should be on a path to creating a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. … It will ensure the continued existence of humanity and life as we know it if there is a calamity on Earth, and it will be the greatest adventure in history."
-Elon Musk, founder and CEO



Vanity FairはNew Establishmentのリストですが、Disruptersとしてマスクを紹介しています。

ELON MUSK
TESLA MOTORS, SPACEX

$12.9bn 
NET WORTH
LAST YEAR'S RANK 5
AGE 43
COLLEGE University of Pennsylvania
POSTGRADUATE Stanford University *
MARRIED No *
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN Cancer
* Did not graduate
* It’s complicated: at last report, Musk has been living with his second wife, Talulah Riley, though they divorced in 2012.

STAGE OF GLOBAL CONQUEST: Musk’s ability to combine staggering ambition with a do-gooder sense of purpose has made him revered among his peers. “You know, if I were to get hit by a bus today,” Google C.E.O. Larry Page purportedly once said, “I should leave all of it to Elon Musk.” The sentiment, which Page reiterated in an interview in March, encapsulates Musk’s role as Silicon Valley’s patron saint and perennial coolest kid in class. Tesla, his electric-car venture, makes the ultimate environmentalist status symbol and was also the best-performing stock of 2013. The company is now working on a mass-market car, the Model 3, that many think could turn Musk into the first great American auto baron in almost a century. SpaceX, his fast-growing rocket company, has successfully completed four commercial satellite launches and promises to one day take humans to Mars. As if that weren't enough, Musk’s green-energy side project, SolarCity, is expanding rapidly, with operations in 15 states and a stock price that has increased more than eightfold since its I.P.O., at the end of 2012.

GRAND GESTURE: In June, Musk wowed observers by announcing that he would share all of Tesla’s patents with any company that wants to develop electric cars, in an attempt to get more of them on the road and slow the pace of climate change. “I don’t think people quite appreciate the gravity of what is going on,” Musk said. “We really need to do something.”


動詞disruptは「〜を破壊する」「〜を中断する」という意味で、disrupterも本来はあまりいい意味ではなさそうです。オックスフォードの辞書の例文も、破壊者という悪い意味で使っています。

（英辞郎）
endocrine disrupter
環境ホルモン、外因性内分泌かく乱化学物質

（オックスフォード）
disrupter
(also disruptor) NOUN
MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES
And the marchers need their own monitors to practice nonviolent discipline and contain any disruptors - who are, de facto, not misguided friends but opponents.
Some business is better conducted, some plans better made, when there's no worry about journalists, disruptors, or even potential new recruits.
The United States has also tinkered with dazzlers of its own, though its focus is apparently more on short-range disruptors that can be attached to rifles.

このようなランキングを見てみると、disruptorが経営者などを形容する時に使われる場合は、これまでのあり方を変える人という意味でポジティブな意味合いを持つと言えそうです。最近の言葉でしょうか。