To disobey means to refuse to follow a rule, command, or instruction. When you disobey your parents by staying up past bedtime, you're choosing not to follow their rule. When a student disobeys a teacher's instruction to work quietly, they're ignoring what they've been told to do.

Disobeying is different from simply forgetting or misunderstanding. A person who disobeys knows what they're supposed to do but decides not to do it anyway.

The word often appears in contexts involving authority: children can disobey parents, citizens can disobey laws, and soldiers can disobey orders. Some acts of disobedience are small and relatively harmless, like refusing to clean your room. Others are serious, like disobeying safety rules that keep people from getting hurt.

Throughout history, some people have practiced what's called civil disobedience, where they deliberately disobey unjust laws to draw attention to unfairness and push for change.